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THE AUTHOR. 



HE SHADOW 

of A GUN 



BY 



H. CLAY MERRITT 



CHICAGO: 
The F. T. Peterson Company 

1904 



5 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Copies Received 

OCT 31 I9U4 

^Copyrigwt tntfy 
CLjGs <Z XXc. NOI 



DEDICATORY. 

In memory of my old friend, Vincent M. Wilcox, 
Late of Madison, Conn., 

Who, on his wedding day, delivered to its these com- 
forting words : "I am now a benedict. I shall be 
the father of one child, and only one, to show you 
all what I can do," I inscribe this volume. 

As it is the first, so also* shall it be the last. 
Faithful to his promise. 

Address, R. Webb Wilcox, New York City. 

The Author. 



Copyrighted 1904, by 
H. CLAY MERRITT. 



INDEX Of SUBJECTS. 



Page. 

Dedicatory 4 

Preface 9 

Reminiscences 13 

Geo. W. Blunt 25 

Amenia Seminary 27 

Climbing- the Roof 29 

Williams College 30 

Post Graduates Hunting 31 

A Remarkable Scent 32 

Woodcocks on Hillsides 33 

Partridges Hold Scent 34 

"Go West, Young Man" 35 

The Prairie Land 37 

Visits Relation 39 

Learns in New York of Eng- 
lish Snipe 41 

Henry County in 1855 42 

What Was and What Was 

Not 43 

Railroads Coming 44 

Ice and Guns Scarce 45 

Swarms of Game; No Mar- 
ket ,....46 

Begin ' Shipments of Prairie 

Chickens 47 

A Visit to Ann a wan 48 

Kill the First Jacksnipe 49 

Geo. Mowcraft 50 

Geo. Cutmore & Dorr & Hig- 

gins 57 

Go to Geneseo with Wm. 

Bowen 52 

Goes to Atkinson in Winter.. 53 
Prairie Chickens in Henry Co. 

Nearly Exterminated 54 

Kill the First Deer 55 

Trapping Big Game 57 

Wild Turkeys on Penney's 

Slough; Col. E. S. Bond... 59 
Ships First Car of Game to 

N. Y. from Geneseo 60 

Myriads of Snipe on the Big 

Slough 61 

Prices Decline to Sixty Cents 

in New York 62 

Nelson Joles 63 

The "Gamey" Woman 65 

Quails in Knox Co., 1856-1860. 66 
Sells Live Prairie Chickens.. 67 
Sells Nelson Joles a Wagon.. 68 
North of Oneida— "Sweet 

Hour of Prayer" 69 

No Sale for Snipe in 1860 70 

Cyclone of 1860— Visit to Min- 
nesota 71 

John A. Lyon and A. & E. 

Robbins 73 

Snipe and Plover Advance, 

Atkinson 74 

Edward Sumner 75 

Overloaded Markets Sell 

Snipe Down 76 

Lots of Golden Plover 77 

High Price of Game and Cer- 
eals, 1865 78 



Page. 

The Country Smiles 79 

Packing Wookcocks 80 

Rock River Bridge at Colona 82 
Habitat of the Woodcock.... 83 
A Bargain in Furs, Wm. Bar- 
ton 84 

A. Collins at Savanna 87 

Nate Tompkins; His idiosyn- 
crasies 88 

Did Not Care for Soft Drinks 89 

Tompkins at Sabula, 1864 90 

Chas. Collins and Specht's 

Ferry 91 

Woodcocks Disappear in 

Summer of 1865 92 

Woodcocks Fly to Highest 

Peaks 93 

Ruse on Tompkins Succeeds. 94 
Cassville and Dewey Hotel.. 95 
Chas. Collins' Misfortunes... 96 
The Sabula Hunters Secede in 

1866 97 

Lost in Kickapoo Bottoms... 98 
A. Collins Disturbs a Bear.. 99 

A Vicious Rattler 100 

Dog Stands Upon a Rattler. .101 
We Settle with S. B. Randall. 102 

Collins Asks Questions 103 

The Long Bridge at Potosi..l04 
The Highest Mode of Exist- 
ence 105 

The "Vision" 106 

A. Collins' Success 107 

The Three Propositions 109 

Freezing Game Begins 110 

First Frozen Mallards Ill 

Builds a Freezer in Atkinson. 112 

Sells Damaged Jacksnipe 113 

In 1879 We Pack Snipe in 

Cans 114 

A New Shipper Comes in at 

Erie, 111 115 

Competition Begins but Soon 

Ends 116 

High Prices, 1878 to 1885 117 

Sells $1,000 Worth of Game... 118 
Pack Quails in Air-Tight 

Cans 119 

Canvas Backs and Red 

Heads 120 

Sells 6 bbls. Canvas Backs 

for $1,000 121 

Sells 30 bbls. Red Heads 122 

Steamboat Firefly, 1868 123 

Built at Davenport. Iowa — 121 
Pass the Mississippi Bridge.. 125 
Get on Wrong Side of the 

River 126 

Stuck on the Rocks Below 

Le Claire 127 

Get Some Free Advertising. .128 
We Reach Sabula and Hunts- 

ville 129 

Mouth of the Maquoketa 
River 130 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS— Continued. 



Pag 
Among the Islands Below 

Dubuque 131 

Turkey River and Cassville, 

Wis 135 

Get Tangled up with Steam- 
boat 138 

We Hunt below McGregor. 

Iowa ..' 139 

Seyberts and Collins Have a 

Racket 140 

Adventure with a Rattler. . .142 
Mrs. M. Interrogates the In- 
dians 143 

T^e Smokestack Gives Out... 145 
Seyberts and Collins Land to 

Fight 146 

We Return to Turkey River 

During Eclipse of Sun 147 

And then to Cassville and 

Below 148 

Return to Cassville and Hunt. 149 

Run Channel of Rapids 150 

Boat Rests Easily 151 

We are Rescued from Rap- 
ids City 152 

Firefly Lies at Garden Plain. 153 

Chas. Stannard 154 

Third Trip of the Firefly in 

1871 " 155 

Storm above Prairie du Chien.156 
We Land Just Below De Soto 
and. have Fine Success— Boat 

Gets Loose with Dog 156 

Annoyed by the Indians 157 

Family Returns Home., 158 

Prairie Chickens Sell for $1.00 

to $1.25 per pair 159 

John Barton 160 

Wm. Morris 162 

The Ogdens 163- 

Their Dissolute Character 164 

A Remarkable Trio 165 

Ike Seybert a Degenerate 166 

R. E. Bailey 167 

Cause of the Cresco Disaster.168 
R. E. Bailey Manages Badly. 169 
Try Frozen Grouse at Cresco 

in 1873 170 

Boss the Last Trip of Firefly 

in 1873 ' 171 

Remarkable Woodcock Coun- 
try on the Little Iowa 172 

Greatest Banner Day Ever 

Recorded 173 

Eight Hundred Birds in Sev- 
en Days 174 

A Cat-astrophe 175 

''Fresh Fish Hear" 177 

Game Business in Henry Co. 

Nears an End in 1870 178 

Trade in the West Begins... 179 

Dow Birds of Nebraska 180 

Golden Plover in Minnesota. 181 
Summer Grass Plover not 
Plenty in Nebraska 181 



Page 

Grouse of Nebraska 182 

Decline of Ducks, Destruc- 
tion of Pigeons 183 

Slaughter of Pigeons in Mis- 
souri at Low Price 184 

Anna wan Trade— John Lyle..l85 
Plentiful Prairie Chickens in 

1860 187 

Prairie Chickens in Iowa 188 

Chas. Davenport 189 

Mapes Brothers 190 

Prices from 1856 to 1895 191 

H. L. Lawrence of Boston.. 192 
A Bad Deal with N. Dur- 
ham 194 

Before Freezers Were in 

Common Use 195 

Bad Game Spoils Markets 196 

Game Laws Destroy Fixity 

of Prices 197 

Trade in Partridges 198 

No Red Heads or Canvas 

Backs in Illinois 199 

Best Way to Make a Bag.... 200 
Prairie Chicken Shooting in 

1866 201 

Quail Hunting in Knox Co., 

Illinois 202 

Quail Plentv in Henry Co. in 

1860 203 

Freezers and Trade in Fro- 
zen Game 204 

Refrigeration Started at 

World's Fair in 1876 205 

Partridge Trade Ruined by 

St. Paul Dealer 206 

Mapes Brothers Continued. . .208 
John Mapes. Hunters ran 

Tough 209 

George Beers as a Financier.211 
Hunters Made Money Easily 

and Spent Freely 212 

E. P. Whipple 213 

Saloons Pay in Some Way.. 214 
The Race for Wealth is the 

Scaffold for Morals 215 

The Public Conscience 217 

The Indian Wards 218 

John A. Lyon 219 

Amos Robbins 221 

Edward Sumner 223 

The Happy Hunting Ground 

No More ..225 

Servile 227 

Don't Expect to Dig up Dia- 
monds 228 

The Dog 229 

Sancho— The Dog 230 

Characteristics of Dogs .231 
Future of Game and Game 

Business 233 

Future of Game and Game 

Birds 236 

Charged Conditions are Fatal 
to Game Birds 237 



I^DEX OF SUBJECTS— Continued. 



Page 
Water and Cover Essential 

for Game Birds 238 

Quail Thrive Best Among 

Farmers 239 

Sport So-called is Ignoble 240 

Taking Life for Sport is 

Brutal 241 

Hunter for Profit Has Had 

His Day 242 

English Snipe or Jack Snipe. 243 

PART II. 
GAME BIRDS OF THE MID- 
DLE WEST. 

"Woodcock 249 

Prairie Chicken 258 

Prairie Chickens, Pintails 264 

Kansas Prairie Chicken 265 

Partridge 266 

Partridge Drum . . ." 272 

Quail 273 

Golden Plover 281 

Grass Plover 285 

Mallard Duck 289 

Teal Duck 295 

Green Wings and Blue Wings. 297 

Teal Duck 299 

Canvas Back and Red Head.. 301 

Game Laws 304 

Keep and Smith 309 

Game Trial at Cambridge for 

Illegal Shipping 310 

Game Trial at Cambridge. . .311 
Game Trial for Possession of 

Stock 314 

Conspiracy of Warden and 

Chicago Dealers 316 

Enforcing Game Laws Makes 

High Prices 317 

Game Warden Seizes N. Y. 

Shipments 318 

Game Warden Sues for 

Heavy Damages 319 

Trial Brings Proof I Shipped 

Only as Agent 320 

Verdict for Defendant 321 

Game Dinners Unfashionable. 322 
Great Neglect of the Game 

Warden 323 

PART III. 

EVOLUTION OF THE GUN. 

Origin of the Gun 324 

Garden of Eden 326 

The First Weapon a Sword.. 327 

Weapons of the Jews 328 

The Assyrians 329 

Use Sword and Bow 330 

Persian Arms and Xerxes... 331 
The Weapons of the Greeks.. 332 
Greek Weapons of Alexander. 333 

Alexander's Invasion 334 

If Alexander Had Gone 

Westward—Egypt 337 

Phoenicians 339 

Greece and Italy 341 



Page 
Roman Arms in First Cen- 
tury ,..342 

Rome and Julius Csesar 344 

He Attacks Gaul and Briton.346 
Iron and the Weapons of 

Britain 347 

Roman Weapons 348 

Roman Empire . Defended 

Against the BaVKft^ians. . .349 
British Weapons Compared 

with Roman 350 

Final Refuge of the Britons. 351 
German Hunters Become 

First Invaders 352 

The Franks 353 

Bows Most Common 354 

Sarmatians and Scythians. .355 
English Bows and English 

Archers 357 

Roman Empire Shows Signs 

of Decay 358 

Romans Contest Advance of 

Scythians 360 

Wealth Devoted to Luxury.. 361 

China S62 

The Wonderful Chinese 363 

Greek Fire from China 364 

Instances of Use of the Fire. 365 
Cleopatra Coquettes with the 

Romans 366 

Luxuries are the Ruin of the 

Romans 367 

The Dead Trunk Makes Lit- 
tle Shade 368 

Greek Fire 370 

Greek Fire After Zenobia 371 

Materials Well Known 372 

With the Exception of Nitre 
They Were Same as Gun- 
powder. Greek Fire Be- 
comes an Explosive 373 

In the Fourteenth Century.. 374 
Greek Fire Helps the Ro- 
mans 375 

The Bow Always Remains 

with the Scythians... 376 

Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. 377 
Goths Quick to Learn of the 

Romans 378 

Commerce Between Syria and 

China 380 

Fall of Rome and the Goths. 381 
Romans not Great at Inven- 
tion 383 

Romans Improve Arms 384 

Romans Build Ships of War.. 385 
Romans not Given to Ab- 
stract Truths 386 

Constantinople 388 

Constantine 392 

Constantine Dies 393 

Mahometans and the Sev- 
enth Century 394 

Constantinople Attacked by 
Arabs, Chasroes 395 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS— Continued. 



Page 
The Avars Retreat from Sud- 
den Fire 396 

Constantinople Besieged 397 

The Arabs Were Masters of 

Science, Mahomet 398-399 

Spread of the System in Ten 

Years 400 

Mahometans Terrorize Three 

Continents 401 

Callinichus and Greek Fire.. 402 
Only Sulphur and Bitumen.. 403 
Callinichus but Little Known 

and Fortunate 404-405 

Greek Fire Saved Constanti- 
nople 406 

Mohammedan Empire Falls 

Back Again 407 

The Saracens— Their Relig- 
ion 408 

The Saracens — No Images 409 

Romans Prospered in Spite of 

Nature Worship 410 

Christianity 411 

Fall of Rome and Christian- 
ity 412 

Crusaders 413 

The Turks and Crusaders 414 

Jerusalem Conquered and 
Then Lost 415 



Page 

Benefit of the Crusades 416 

Christian world Revives at 
Close of Crusades 417 

Gunpowder Follows Greek 
Fire 418 

Gunpowder Handmaid of Ar- 
tillery 419 

Mahomet II Takes Constan- 
tinople 420 

Cannon Made to Shoot Five 
Miles 421 

Christianity Gains by Past 
Mistakes 422 

Improvements in Artillery. .423 

Improvements in Hand Guns. 425 

Cap-Lock the Crowning In- 
vention of the 19th Century. 427 

War Brought Gunpowder 428 

Reformation Cleans Out Old 
Abuses 429 

Present Age Will Ignore the 
Arms of Antiquity 430 

What Gunpowder Has' 
Wrought 431 

The Reign of Gunpowder 
Seems Permanent 432 

The Gun is Palladium of Lib- 
erty 433 

Poems 439 



INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Portrait of Author.. Frontispiece 

Killing a Deer 55 

Trapping Big Game 57 

Nelson Joles 64 

Mrs. Joles 65 

Disturbing a Bear 99 

Above La Crescent, Minn 101 

Dresbach, Minn : 102 

Long Bridge at Potosi 104 

A. Collins 107 

Specht's Ferry 108 

Boy too Busy to Drown 125 

Mrs. M. Carried to the Shore. 128 

Savanna— Old Town 129 

Maquoketa River 130 

Dubuque's Grave 131 

Rock Cut on the Catfish 132 

Dubuque 133 

Mouth of Catfish below Du- 
buque 134 

East Dubuque and R. R. 

Bridge 134 

Eagle Point above Dubuque.. 135 
Broken Bridge at Eagle 

Point 136 

Cassville, Wis 137 

Above the Mouth of Turkey 

River 13S 

Railroad Bridge and Wiscon- 
sin River 139 

Pictured Rocks Below Mc- 
Gregor 140 

Putty Cave Below McGregor. 141 
Adventure with a Rattler,. .,142 



Looking from Pikes Peak to- 
wards Wisconsin River 143 

North McGregor Point 144 

South McGregor 145 

Boat on the Rapids 150 

Dog Loose with Drifting 

Boat 157 

Railroad Bridge over Little 

Iowa River 172 

Cat-astrophe 175 

The Seyberts with Demi- 
monde on the Boat 166 

Mrs. M. Pulls in Whopper 

Catfish 178 

Dow Bird 180 

John Mapes 208 

John A. Lyon 220 

Amos Robbins 222 

Edward Sumner 224 

English Snipe 243 

Woodcock 249 

Prairie Chicken 258 

Partridge 266 

Different Tracks Made by 

Game and Song Birds 267 

Quail 274 

Golden Plover 281 

Grass Plover 285 

Mallard Duck 289 

Teal Duck 296 

Canvas Back 301 

Red Head 302 

A Gossip with Fan 446 

Cure for Obesity ,...,..,.448 



PREFACE. 

This is not an autobiography. The woman at my 
elbow rose indignant at the mention of auto's. She 
says, "Do you know how they annoy me? They 
are the plague of my life. They are beggars in dis- 
guise who wait on me without solicitation. They 
have put me down to a certain figure and I must pay 
up or become friendless. Now I am going to be 
square with these fellows, but I will bowl them 
down at every opportunity. The thing is becoming 
chronic, and I shall demand of these inquisitors that 
their hands are clean and the goods are sterilized 
before they go into the market. Ah, yes, I prefer 
to distribute my own charities without being a web 
for every genteel fly that buzzes." 

I rose to explain we were talking about auto's 
and not ought-to's. "Oh,' she said, "you mean auto- 
mobiles, I expected it was some foolish thing you 
were going into. You know I could not get out 
when once they started to run away. I like a 
horse I can say 'Whoa' to and will stand stock still 

when he is tired out, but oh, dear, the auto's " 

We settled our difficulties then and there, with the 
autocrats, the autographs, and finally with the auto- 
biographs, declaring we would have none of them, 
so the whole story will shut up as tight as a clam 
on personalities which are ours per se. The reminis- 
cences will be short, and if their flavor is not agree- 
able you will readily distinguish between them and 
an emanation which comes from decomposition of 
organized bodies, in which case we would have to 
preach our own funeral. 

To the impartial reader it will occur, we imagine, 
that this history travels over ground untouched by 

9 



10 PREFACE. 

other writers. Freezing introduced a new order of 
shipments and its immense benefits spread shortly 
from public to private uses. Frost and ice now 
begin to be fashionable and fire and solar heat were 
ostracised, and the thermometer became the divid- 
ing ground between the champions, while isothermal 
lines became the rule for every perishable property. 
The Blue Line cars came into notice about 1875, 
and the Star Line and others started shortly after, 
till now we have a net work of moving trains which 
distribute the goods to all parts of the country. 
The game business stood at the foundation of these 
discoveries, which eliminated the great obstacles 
which had so long opposed progress. We lost the 
birds but we gained infinitely more than we lost in 
the general spread of the principles of refrigeration. 
No amount of nursing could furnish sufficient sup- 
plies of game for the cities as they increased in 
number and in size, while suitable acres for the 
propagation of game birds constantly decreased. The 
universal sentiment seems to be to accept the loss 
as we did that of the pigeons, which was more 
fanciful than real. The red rag of the hunters 
which so long infuriated the bull which stands 
regnant upon the trembling dais which he has over- 
thrown will now be done away. The victory was 
not worth the taking, and the remnant which was 
left was not worth saving. 

In the description of the game birds of this 
County we have not thought it worth while to use 
other than the common nomenclature with which 
every school boy is familiar. The varieties are few 
and those only have been mentioned, the hunting 
of which was profitable. 

The poet Horace uttered his indignation against 
him who first invented a ship, but without our little 



PREFACE. 11 

craft the adventures on the Little Iowa would have 
been impossible. Fronk, with his little punt, would 
not have threatened to clear the ducks out of the 
whole marsh of Annawan, and Hiserodt, shoving 
his canoe into the quill weeds, would not have ex- 
terminated a hundred ducks at one discharge. 
Without a boat, the Joles' might not have crossed 
the Green River with their loads of golden plover, 
or the Collins' swept the woodcock that infested the 
shores of the Mississippi and soared far above the 
grave of Dubuque. Without a boat, alas, how could 
Charon transport us poor mortals across the Styx 
into the land of the immortals. 

Macauley has said somewhere that if London were 
to be destroyed by any calamity that the man stand- 
ing on London Bridge would be able to reproduce 
in vision the Imperial City. Some day a despairing 
huntsman, finding as he will that the plough of 
the farmer has made the prairie, once vocal with 
wild birds, only a desolate solitude, will reconstruct 
a map of this wonderful region where the hen 
cackled on every plain, the quail whistled on every 
hill, the snipe flew along the marshes, the wood- 
cock whistled through the grove and the ducks 
swarmed in thousands in every conceivable bayou, 
a sight grander than any temple and more ravishing 
to the hunter than the streams of Paradise. 

It is not our purpose to glorify any hunter by a 
display of big bags of game. Mighty hunters are 
not scarce in Henry County, but they are the sur- 
vivors, and the game business has passed away in 
a generation, not by the onslaught of the hunters, 
however severe, but by the onward sweep of those 
mechanical forces which have converted wild lands 
into smiling and cultivated fields. The wilderness 
is the home of the barbarian, and both are inimical 



12 PREFACE. 

to civilization. A few snap shots of the camera 
here and there will give form but cannot restore 
the dead. If we can set before our readers a photo- 
graphic view of the changes by which, from 1857 
to 1897, a period of forty years, the game has 
been driven from Henry County and adjoining 
waters, we shall be abundantly rewarded. 

The third and last division of this work has re- 
ceived the greatest attention. The introduction of 
the gun into human history was one of the most 
powerful factors in building up the civilization of 
the present day. The old manner of warfare has 
been examined with all the minuteness that history 
could furnish. The Greek Fire has been set further 
back than the date generally given at the siege of 
Constantinople, 673 to 67Q, about four centuries, and 
the reasons therefor. The whole question turns 
when the Greek Fire became an explosive, a projec- 
tile, and later the basis of gunpowder. In the short 
digression on the causes which produced the "De- 
cline and Fall" of Gibbon, we have ventured to ex- 
press an opinion that Christianity did not have any 
appreciable share in that disaster. We prefer to 
agree with Dean Millman in his notes, and with 
Sir James Mcintosh, than whom a more scholarly, 
conservative and judicial critic has not appeared, 
than to the biased judgment of any sceptic. 






REMINISCENCES. 

PART I. 

I was born in Carmel, N. Y., in the last month of 
183 1. I was born with a gun. By this I do not 
mean that any smoke of powder or brimstone 
marked my advent, or that I was so heroic in ap- 
pearance that some outward sign was appropriate 
for my proper getting on, but I think there was a 
taint of wildness in my ancestors, and if the saving 
grace of economy had not struck them, and the fear 
of becoming vagabonds, I have no doubt, other 
things being equal, they would have become hunters 
like myself. They were backwoodsmen once and 
carved their way with the axe, and passed their lives 
with modest comfort, thrift and industry. A gun 
to them was like a bird of ill omen and those that 
followed it were denominated lazy. 

When I was five years old I was sent to board 
out in the Village, and my brother and myself were 
sent to school, which was very handy, on the banks 
of a pond. This pond was a mile long and half a 
mile wide, following the length of the Village for 
half its course, then dropping between high banks 
it drew to a point on its southwestern shore. One 
day a fine-looking, highly cultivated preacher came 
to town, and making the acquaintance of the Ray- 
mond family, they who instituted the show business, 
married a daughter, and not thinking a pond was 
hardly appropriate for such a fine sheet of water, 
called the villagers together and gave it the more 
dignified name "of Gleneida. I came home to stay 
at the end of two years, a mile from town in 
the country. There were hunters all around me at 

is 



14 REMINISCENCES. 

that early period, bushels and barrels of game were 
transported to New York past our door almost every 
day in the Fall months, going by market wagon to 
Peekskill on the Hudson and thence by boat to the 
City. Once or twice a year my father went to the 
City and took my brother and myself with him, 
when we had tne great novelty of riding on a steam- 
boat, the master of which was a Mr. Depew, father 
of the illustrious Chauncey, the after-dinner speaker. 
I was quite small at that time and the sights of the 
City were altogether too much for me. I was con- 
tinually lagging behind while my father and brother 
were leading along the street, and finally they got 
a few rods ahead of me and something attracted 
my eye within one of the windows, observing which 
I turned partly around as I moved on, and there 
was a funeral procession coming out of the front 
door, and as the bier was passing I fell directly over 
it onto the sidewalk. My folks fell back and gath- 
ered me up until I could meet another exploit. I 
always carried a few shillings with me, and if I did 
not buy gum or candy, I threw it away for a pistol. 
I had a school mate who frequently discoursed on 
the virtues of that weapon and of his success in kill- 
ing quail with one, and a quail appeared to me a 
valuable asset to fill out my slender purse. The first 
time I bought a pistol I confided the knowledge of it 
to my companion and we started out when snow was 
on the ground in the confident assurance that we 
were going to supply the market. We thought we 
would first load up the gun, and when that was done 
w'e took it up by turns and shoved it out at arm's 
length to show our ability to handle such a prize. 
When a little woodpecker, before unobserved, came 
climbing down a tree very near us we thought we 
would shorten his journey somewhat by a volley, and 



Reminiscences. is 

my companion, catching up the gun in too much 
haste, he pressed the trigger slightly as he lifted 
his arm, and firing the weapon without taking sight, 
the gun was discharged, sending the load within a 
few inches of my head. Then I took less interest 
in such small game and thought of getting a coat 
impervious to bullets if I followed the business any 
longer, until inquiring of my school mates I found 
the pistol would not kill a fly, and I believe it would 
not, for a fly was altogether too smart for it. 

I do not know how the earlier generations of my 
family captured game, when the flint lock was the 
only kind in use, and that only a single barrel, for 
they certainly did market birds long before I was 
born, but I heard my father say that during heavy 
falls of snow himself and brothers used to follow 
into the swamps where partridges fed, and finding 
the holes where they plunged into the snow, would 
fall suddenly upon them and catch a great many 
underneath. The old gun, the king's arm which 
was set away behind the door in our home, was 
seldom called out then unless a hen hawk disturbed 
the chickens or a weasel was seen reaching out his 
long neck between the gaps in the stone wall. Then 
my father by snapping the lock a few times would 
generally pursuade it to go ofT, and nothing was 
left of the varmint but shoestrings. My brother 
whom I interested with myself at length bethought 
us of getting out the old gun and on the pretense of 
killing crows have a good time with it shooting 
bobolinks, whose melody we were not anxious about. 
We had no shot, but used in its place small white 
beans, but the arm was so heavy neither of us could 
hold it up to shoot into a tree where the birds mostly 
sat, so I lay down on my stomach and supported 
the gun on my back while he brought down some 



16 REMINISCENCES. 

trophies in that way. One day a big owl alighted 
on a hump about twelve rods from a stone fence. 
I snapped the old king's arm some minutes before 
it would go off, but at last a spark fell and the owl 
was no more. Always we had the satisfaction of 
saying we had killed something when we carried 
the old gun, and on being pressed to declare what it 
was we solemnly affirmed it was the powder. This 
uncertain and irregular use of the weapon was 
more freely indulged in because we had inspected 
a certain back room in the house where many old 
relics of the past were stored. Among them we 
found packages and packages of powder which 
had been preserved unused for seasons long for- 
gotten. Every new demand for the gun made the 
purchase of another quarter of a pound necessary 
until there were pounds of it lying about, and 
though much showed the effects of time, in our 
youthful exuberance every package was a prize, 
and explosions became very frequent, but all went 
through the king's arm and nothing higher than 
bobolinks fell to our booty. 

Next I heard of a distant neighbor that had a gun 
once owned by Whitney, the crack hunter of that 
country, and I succeeded in some way of carrying 
it off with a very little money, and for a long time 
I concealed it in that back room where we found 
the powder, until my father stumbled on it one day 
and then there was a rumpus. I had to explain its 
presence there the best I could, but in the end I re- 
tained the gun. It cost something to shoot it, and 
for that reason I did not shoot it very much, but it 
became the tattle of the neighborhood that I had a 
gun and that it was not a gratis res in our family. 
My maternal relative across the creek said he had 
some grey squirrels he was planning to tame, but 



REMINISCENCES. 17 

as soon as I got the gun they were all scattered 
and gone. I carried the gun with me on most oc- 
casions when I could get away down to the stream 
where there was a big rock projecting from the 
farther side and where I gathered many strings of 
fish. This cliff-like elevation was covered with hem- 
locks and the shadows fell all the way to the top of 
the rock, above which a zigzag path led along the 
hill among the evergreens. Looking a few steps 
before me I perceived a partridge with its wings 
and tail spread as if about to fly on my approach. 
I threw up the gun with a quick motion to the 
proper angle and fired. The smoke was so intense 
for a moment I could see nothing. My eyes were 
blurred and wet with excitement, but going down a 
few feet and groping around I found the partridge, 
and as we had an old-time visitor that day, it was 
served as a meal and eaten with a relish. 

At that time in the Spring the woodcocks were 
playing around in the edge of the evening on and 
above a piece of swampland that adjoined the home- 
stead 'and I often went down to see them alight and 
hear their s-p-a-t-e. Sometimes they would drop 
down from the sky almost on my head. Then they 
would switch off a rod or two away, to alight and 
repeat their ditty, then arise skyward again, but 
the ground was so rough I could not make them 
out on the dark ground. Across the creek was an- 
other refuge for woodcock, and here in the brush 
on the hillside they passed the hours of sunlight, 
and as dusk started in they would rise up, and, go- 
ing to the open field near by, they would discuss 
the same low notes as in the swamp land. I watched 
at the top of the hill to see if I could catch them 
coming out, but I never quite succeeded. One night 
the bird was going through his usual billet-doux; I 



IB REMINISCENCES. 

was trying to see him as he whirled around in the 
sky above me, when suddenly he dropped within a 
few feet, twisted to one side and landed under a 
moderate sized hickory tree and "spated" again. 
I inspected the place very closely by the sound where 
he sat and at last as the moon was rising I could de- 
tect something that looked like a hump of dirt. 
I concluded it was him and though in the shade 
of the tree I could not see the sights across the 
barrel, I fired at a venture, and going up found I 
had killed Mr. Woodcock. 

I am partial to the cap-lock because the first I 
ever saw I borrowed from a neighbor, and there I 
learned its wonderful properties to earn your grati- 
tude or disgust. Fifty miles north of New York 
City the Croton River is divided into three branches 
and on the middle branch most of my early life 
was passed. I had a fondness for that stream which 
nothing could shake. There I fished long and often 
and there I soon learned to know for miles all the 
deep places where the largest fish abounded, and in 
my delight at the loan which my neighbor gave me 
I hurried along until I reached one of those deep 
places under the bank where most of the large fish 
gathered and which I had often failed to take with 
the line and which I now proposed to shoot, a thing 
which I had seen done in shallow water before, and 
I shot. Shooting a little high, as I had learned of 
the refraction of shot in water, I found while I did 
not kill any fish, I killed the gun as effectively as a 
striker kills an engine. Like all amateurs, I let 
down my gun and raised the hammer. For what 
purpose I do not know, only to see the lock working, 
and alas it did not work. The lock was a wreck. 
Then I set the wonderful thing down in despair, 
resting it against the body of a tree for support, and 



REMINISCENCES. 19 

I thought. When I had thought enough and the 
surprise passed off, I turned to pick up my gun and 
lo, it was not. When I had thought a little longer 
I looked down and discovered it lying in the bottom 
of the river, whither it had gone, I suppose, because 
so much thinking had disarmed caution. When this 
gun was repaired it took all the spare change I could 
muster to pay for the job, but I had the gun. It 
had cost me something and though I was getting 
the worst of it I did not repine. I thought I would 
like to be a sportsman. It was ignoble to shoot 
game sitting ; I thought I must try wing shooting, 
and this is how I began and practiced. A colony 
of swallows had builded their nest on my neighbor's 
barn, and as they were coming and going like bees 
at all hours, I walked in among them. After shoot- 
ing one or two loads, my gun, which had an iron 
rod, became choked with it in loading, and I could 
not withdraw it. I was determined it should come 
out if I had to shoot it out, and as the rod rested 
upon a load of shot, it was trying to a gun to un- 
load it by firing and it might try me. Turning up 
the muzzle at about an angle of 45 I discharged the 
load at a swallow, rod and all. The bird fell, I am 
sure of that, but of myself I was not so sure. It 
threw me violently around and the stock came down 
so sharply on my shoulder that I was a little dazed 
for a while, but I became composed as the pain 
worked off and I found the recoil had not hurt the 
gun, but the iron rod I could not tell whither it had 
disappeared, neither could I load again. The gun 
lay around and I did not dare return it in that shape 
to my neighbor. Haying was coming on. The gun 
was pointed in the direction of my father's farm 
where the haying was to take place, but as I had no 
means of following the rod, either in direction or 



20 REMINISCENCES. 

distance, I never expected to see it again. While 
the hands were working in the hay at least fifty or 
sixty rods from the barn where I shot the swallows, 
the sharp rap of a scythe around some metallic 
sounding thing, surprised the mower. . The thing 
appeared to be the rod which I had shot away and 
in its descent had come down point foremost 
through an apple tree, which ruined the scythe from 
point to heel and became the mystery of the whole 
summer. In due time I returned the gun to my 
neighbor and the rod. My aspirations to shoot fish 
were somewhat modified and my thirst for water 
from that time on checked, but my passion for gun- 
ning increased. I had often heard of the Gay 
boys and Whitney, living a few miles away, who 
made their living with a gun, and I was eager to 
follow them and learn their methods. As I was 
along this branch of the Croton every day, I soon 
saw what game they were hunting, and the sound 
of their guns became familiar to me, as our house 
was only forty rods away. I had a curiosity to 
make their company and in a boyish way would run 
down to meet them whenever I heard their guns. 
I did this for several times until we were quite 
familiar. They were good, honest, industrious men, 
and at noon tide they took their meals under the 
hemlocks on top of the hill, about ten rods away. 
They seemed pleased to see 'me, and had not that 
reserve which most hunters have when you make 
their acquaintance. Their game was woodcocks, 
about which they gave me bits of history, and I was 
delighted to see the birds and handle them. They 
were the first woodcocks I had ever seen, and they 
told me of their value, which seemed to make their 
work profitable. In the course of our talk they de- 
scribed how they had lost a bird between where we 



REMINISCENCES. 21 

sat and the bridge, some twenty or thirty rods away. 
They had wounded the bird, but being still able 
to fly, they had not found it and at last had given 
it up. This was in the latter part of October when 
woodcocks passed Southward, generally taking their 
journey along the beds of streams where they ran 
that way. I did not see the hunters again for many 
days, but I had some traps set for mink along the 
creek and next day was inspecting them to see if 
I had caught anything, and just above a stone dam 
not far from the bridge, as I cleared the fence I 
saw before me in the soft bottom and within a step 
or two of my trap a woodcock which did not rise 
as I approached and I immediately concluded it 
must be the lost bird of my hunters, and carefully 
stooping down with a sudden spring I caught my 
bird and it was the woodcock of which I spoke, as 
his bloody foot and matted feathers around it plainly 
told me. As I lifted it up I thought it appeared of 
rather light weight, and I found that its body had 
shrunken away from not getting its usual food. 
I gave it to my brother, who had caught 
some quail in a trap, and they were all dispatched 
together to the city. The woodcock sold for half 
price on account of its poor condition. 

When the next year came around I was a little 
farther down the stream and about the first of July 
when I scared up a whole brood of woodcocks, 
which scattered about in various directions. One 
bird took across the little stream and alighted on the 
opposite bank, a distance back and between a lot 
of stones, brush and debris from the river. I waded 
across the creek to the spot where I had accurately 
marked the bird alight, and on reaching the place 
and looking down carefully between the stones I 
saw the bird. Stepping back a little I again made 



22 REMINISCENCES. 

a quick move of my hand and secured it, not quite 
full grown, but salable. I started home with the 
bird in my hand and as I raised the first hill across 
the stream a market wagon came along and the 
driver asked me what I had in my hand. I 
showed him and he said he would give me a shilling 
for it, so I exchanged properties and he went on 
his way. 

In the fall one of the Gay boys came past where 
I was along the stream and he was hunting part- 
ridges. He said one had flown up ahead of him 
along the open, and I followed him to see it shot. 
It had run out beyond the copse that lay between 
that and the open field, but the dog soon struck its 
trail and raised it, and as the hunter put up his 
gun I took particular notice how he sighted his bird 
and that he followed it along with his eye over the 
barrel till his motion corresponded with that of the 
bird, and then holding a little bit ahead it was 
easily brought down. I bought it of him for fifteen 
cents and I went all the way to the house and back 
again to get the money. 

When I was thirteen years old I had a gun and 
used it freely, but had no dog. In the bottom land 
I have mentioned where I was first attracted by 
the woodcocks, there were several broods raised 
each year and the first of July shooting began. 
Along this lowland inside of the woods there was 
a low swale which straggled off down to the ravine 
where it became a little rivulet emptying into the 
creek, which was a drain for the whole country. As 
I crossed the swale near its source I flushed a wood- 
cock, which I immediately shot. The report of the 
gun threw up another bird and I disposed of him 
in the same manner. I may say here that this shot 
was of the easiest possible kind and that it bore no 



REMINISCENCES. 23 

comparison to shooting older birds in thicker cover 
later in the season. 

CHARLES KNOX. 

At this time I must recall also a man in whose 
family I dwelt during the two years I was away 
from home, whither my father had placed me to be 
convenient to school. He was a great fisherman, as 
well as a great hunter, and while his house adjoined 
the street its barn sat partly over and adjoining the 
lake. Here he caught pickerel every day and sold 
them. He had a great eagle, which he held in a 
cage and which caused much talk among the small 
boys in the neighborhood. A few rods away on 
the corner of the street he had a boot and shoe 
shop, that is, he made boots and shoes, but did not 
keep them in stock. He passed his time between 
the two places, and as he was frequently out gun- 
ning I came to know much about his life and very 
much about the guns, which to me were a great 
wonder and as I well remember were said to be 
of great value. 

How well I remember his pleasure at the good 
reports which came to him from my teachers. Our 
spelling books at that day had some Latin words at 
the bottom of the pages and whether I was taught 
or learned them of my own choosing I do not know, 
but I learned them and repeated them when I came 
home at the close of school as readily as I would 
have done in English. When we came to the multi- 
plication table I noticed the numbers we had to 
learn ran only to twelve or twelve times twelve, and 
without asking why I proceeded to multiply up to 
twenty, thirty and even to a hundred, and later years 
could run up much higher figures, sometimes to 



24 CHARLES KNOX. 

four decimals. I was much annoyed in later years 
at some of these street fakirs who gave sums to be 
figured out by the bystanders, and no one could seem 
to do it so rapidly as they could do by their methods. 
All that I heard I could answer as fast as they 
asked and I would have done so only it would have 
negatived their theory and would have brought 
attention which I did not want. Very high numbers 
are so seldom used it does not matter about them 
in daily practice, but the involuntary process which 
often comes continuously through my waking hours 
is not at all desirable, and it is only by a very strong 
effort that I can prevent it. 

When I left him to go home he followed 
me with smiles and many good words, as 
though I were his son and he w r ere loth to part with 
me. I think while I was with him I drew in with 
my breath something of the passion which ab- 
sorbed him and it is no wonder the more I emulated 
him he became my hero. He was just one thing al- 
ways and I can think of him in no other way, and 
if you improved him you would be compelled to re- 
construct him. As I walked the road to town every 
day to school he never lost sight of me or forgot to 
inquire about me. He was a man of large build, 
weighing over two hundred pounds, and I wondered 
often as I grew older how he could carry his sturdy 
frame all day long among the marshes, bogs and 
quagmires which the woodcocks infested and be 
blithe and gay when the day closed. I never saw 
him angry. He was not profuse in expressions of 
his morality and he had no high ideas of honor. He 
was not a cultivated man, neither his conscience 
nor his credit was brisk, but he would not offend 
you if he could avoid it. He would not argue with 
you long on any subject, and if you did not lik'e 



CHARLES KNOX. 25 

him you could part with his company without any 
sign of displeasure. I think his vices were of the 
milder sort. He was once a great drinker, but had 
become temperate. His profanity appeared only 
among the lower class whom he thought would re- 
spect it. It was not gross and did not flavor his 
general speech and did not seem to wound his 
wavering conscience. When he took his usual hunt 
in July he used to drive past my home and often I 
have met him on the way to school, and when he re- 
turned he would regale me with stories of how many 
birds he had killed and the fine times he had had 
each day. I learned many lessons in woodcraft 
while I was under his care, and later when I wient to 
school a good many miles away he was located at a 
station on a railroad when I took my departure and 
where I found him when I returned. When I 
wanted a dog he furnished it, and some of the stories 
which will follow will give an account of the smart- 
ness which one of them displayed in the bush. When 
my old host died not many years ago he was a 
thousand miles from me, poor, unable to take care of 
himself, and, so far as I know, beyond his son, he 
had not a mourner. That man's name was Charles 
Knox. Peace to his ashes ! 



GEORGE W. BLUNT. 

When I was grown or nearly so I began to be 
known as an amateur hunter of some respectability 
in that state where game was not very abundant, 
and a noted watering place called Lake Mahopac, 
five or six miles from my home, frequently sent up 
sportsmen in the summer and fall and they were 
not as well versed in the habits of the birds and the 
places where they could be found as I who saw 



26 GEORGE W. BLUNT. 

them more or less every day, and they would drive 
around to me with an extra gun and dog to shoot 
two or three hours with them, which I most willingly 
did, and among those who thus came was a Mr. 
George W. Blunt, connected with the government 
survey of the harbors in and around New York and 
vicinity. When I entered Williams College in 1850 
I remembered that man, and as I sometimes killed 
more partridges than the family I boarded with 
could use I shipped a box of them to my friend, and 
this was the first shipping of any consequence I 
ever did. Before I went off to school, however, I 
became acquainted with the habits of most game 
birds that were to be found in that country. In the 
late summer there came upon ridgeland of my 
father's and also that of our neighbors a few pairs 
of fat plover, birds with a very melodious note which 
they uttered as they rose to the wing, of rather 
wild nature, but where the grass grew tall they 
were comparatively tame. I killed a number of pairs 
of them and saddling a horse I rode down to Lake 
Mahopac, the watering place before mentioned, and 
found a good market for them at twenty-five cents 
each, which the buyer paid me for in silver quarters, 
which pleased me very much, my father making no 
objection or offering me any compliment. Then as 
summer came on I went up to Barnes' swamp, a 
mile distant, where I heard the Gay boys killed a 
great many woodcock, and as I was the first on the 
ground that season, I found them quite plenty, but 
my anxiety to make a good bag made me nervous, 
and although I shot away three pounds of shot I 
only caught one bird. Then I hired an acquaint- 
ance in the afternoon to scare up the birds and let 
me shoot standing outside the bushes. In this way 
I scattered three pounds more of shot and only 



GEORGE W. BLUNT. 27 

bagged one bird . By that time they had become so 
scattered and scared into distant covers and lay so 
close that I had to give up the day's hunt. The bird 
I killed in springing up through the bushes became 
momentarily entangled, when I stole a march on him 
and killed him before he could get away. I then 
discovered I was shooting too far behind. 

AMENIA SEMINARY. 

At the age of sixteen I went to Amenia, Dutchess 
County, New York, to study for college and re- 
mained there one season. This school was a 
Methodist institution, and several of my home ac- 
quaintances went with me. None of them were apt 
or industrious students and they seemed to think 
they were there to while away a holiday. One of 
our number, at least, got into the habit of fast liv- 
ing and was expelled. One young woman led a 
life of bad repute. There was one young man there 
also who had once lived in Carmel, where his father 
was a dominie, whom I found had entered when I 
did from some eastern county, who has since made 
a great mark in the world, Cyrus W. Foss, now 
Bishop Foss. I think there was something in his 
make-up which changed the whole course of my 
future life, because I pursued the same studies with 
him and could easily lead in the routine of daily 
duties where there was hard work to be done, but, 
oh my, he had a dictionary of words in his brain 
and such a fertility of logic and language as I never 
saw equalled. In debate, in argument, he could set 
off such a display of fireworks that I thought he had 
mistaken the day for Fourth of July. I only at- 
tended one of his debates and he so overcame his 
competitors that he left them no place to stand upon 



28 AMENIA SEMINARY. 

and nothing to talk about, and the case was so well 
argued from his standpoint that there was no need 
of an umpire, and there was not a baker's dozen left 
to hear the verdict. I was positively certain that he 
studied no harder nor to better purpose than I. He 
was like Jones ; he could do anything anybody else 
could and pay the freight. His wealth of words 
and his serene and intrepid manner would not have 
disgraced any speaker addressing the Senate of the 
United States. I can only say that he frightened 
me out of all expectations. However, I did not ex- 
pect much, as I always found a person ready to do 
anything better than I did. The building in which 
I roomed was four stories high, occupied entirely 
by young men. Adjoining this building on the south 
side was a building which met it at right angles, 
in Which there was a belfry, and farther south there 
was a third building used as a dormitory for young 
ladies, about the size and shape of the building that 
I was in. One of the young ladies came from my 
native place and my brother for a long time flat- 
tered and flirted with her. On our side was a fel- 
low — I think it was the man that rang the bell — who 
was in the habit of coming into my room, letting 
down the top window, climbing over it and by 
reaching with his hand could catch hold of the 
shingles on the roof above and so pull himself 
through the aperture. I saw that done so often that 
I thought it was no smartness and would like to 
try it. I lowered the window, stood upon the top 
of it and putting my hands on the roof pulled my- 
self out. I had seen this same young fellow re- 
turn often the same w<ay as he went out ; I had fol- 
lowed up to the peak of the roof, and after I had 
seen enough thought I would return to my room. 
I dropped my feet down outside of the shingles 



CLIMBING THE ROOF. 29 

and began to slide along down, having no hold at 
last till just the space I sat upon, and as I reached 
further down I did not seem to hit the top of the 
window, and I was then sitting on the edge of the 
roof not over two* feet wide, when failing to reach 
the window I started to return back up the roof. 
As I did so I slipped an inch or two and came 
within an inch of going down, when I sat perfectly 
still and thought a moment what to do. I could not 
go down and in trying to go up I would slip lower. 
Below me the ground was covered with smooth flat 
stones, and as I looked across to the windows on the 
south side in the ladies' department, I saw the win- 
dows full of people looking out and the ground be- 
low covered with young ladies, and among them the 
one that came with me from Carmel. I felt care- 
fully around with my fingers on each side of me 
and by good luck struck the point of a nail which 
had risen sharply through the shingles and I fas- 
tened to it on one side ; repeating it I had the same 
success on the opposite side, and between these two 
I partly balanced myself, as the nails were too' small 
to hold' my whole weight. I raised myself slightly as 
much as I thought the nails would bear and found I 
could gain something, a half an inch or so at a time, 
my feet in the meantime hanging over the roof. By 
continuing to hunt for nails and finding them I grad- 
ually recovered my lost ground, which I could not 
have done if my nerves had been the least unsteady. 
I got back to the top of the roof, then passing along 
the peak I reached the middle building where the 
bell ringer took me in, and as it seemed to me gav£ 
me my life again. 



30 WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 

I entered Williams College in 1854 and remained 
there until graduation. For so old a settled country 
it was well supplied with game, that is, with part- 
ridges and woodcocks, hares and rabbits, but no 
quail. I never saw but one in the four years and 
that was on a high mountain half way to Greylock, 
and it was not disposed to make my acquaintance 
and moved off. Partridges and rabbits were the 
stock game and they were equally plentiful. I 
killed hundreds of the former, and Mrs. Sabin, with 
whom I boarded, had a full house on Sunday when 
most of them were served up. I first killed them on 
the ground under the bushes and I always shot at 
them whether they were sitting or flying. In the 
latter case I generally failed. Tuthill, one of my 
classmates, often went with me on Saturdays and 
sometimes on Wednesdays, and when I shot at a 
bird flying and missed him, he would come up and 
chaff me with the remark, "As usual," when I told 
him I had missed. However, he dropped out as the 
season waned and I hunted alone. Sometimes we 
hunted for squirrels, which were very numerous. 
One day late in the fall, when the leaves were most- 
ly fallen and the birds getting rather wild, I traveled 
over the usual route and a partridge sprang up from 
the foot of a hill and circled round within gun shot 
of me. I followed him around with my sight, look- 
ing across the gun, then giving a quick jerk ahead 
I fired and he fell. I then distinctly remembered 
how this had been done and I never forgot it after- 
ward, though I killed so many. I overstocked 
Widow Sabin and I thought I would market a box 
and see how they would sell. I knew of no one in 
New York but this Mr. Blunt and I sent him the 
game. He answered me in a few days, saying he 
liked the birds and enclosed me the value which he 



WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 31 

said Messrs. A. & E. Robbins put upon them. The 
price was not very much, but it put me in communi- 
cation with the greatest game merchant New York 
had ever had or ever will have. 

POST-GRADUATE HUNTING. 

At Williamstown I generally hunted without a 
dog, but on one of my vacations home my old friend 
Knox, finding I wanted one, offered to show me 
one which he said was of fine breed, and together 
we went out to give him a start in the woodcock 
country north of the village. We did not meet with 
any till Knox, who was a very heavy man, began 
to get tired out, when he suggested I give him five 
dollars and take and use the dog, and I got him on 
the cars with me and landed at the college city. 
And now as graduation w r as past, I set out for a 
good time among* the feathered birds in the hill 
country. On the road to the White Oaks across 
the Hoosic River I had often found partridges plenty 
and I followed up along the little stream that flows 
down from there. When about half way up on the 
right side there was an opening in the timber and 
in the soft ground I raised two woodcocks. Then 
I hunted a long time and could find no more in that 
neighborhood, and going farther up I struck some 
higher ground. The dog running along a little be- 
fore me suddenly stopped and pointed. Nothing mov- 
ing and seeing nothing, at last I ordered Jack to 
start him up, whatever it was. A partridge arose and 
1 killed it, then another and another, two or three fly- 
ing at a time, at every rise of wjhich I killed at least 
one and marked the birds as best I could in the di- 
rection they had taken. The dog moved on ; in a few 
moments he set again and the birds seemed to be 



32 POST-GRADUATE HUNTING. 

very gentle and unsuspicious. They would alight in 
a few rods. When I thought that I had got about 
all on that side of the road, I crossed to the other, 
where I knew one or more birds had certainly gone, 
how far I could not say. What I could not under- 
stand was the action of Jack, who seemed to be lead- 
ing ahead all the time with his tail straight out, 
with his nose well raised, and apparently taking a 
line direct some distance ahead. As we proceeded 
farther and farther I was becoming dubious of his 
knowledge, and going twenty or thirty rods and 
nothing new occurring, I was half inclined to call 
him off and go back, but did not. He proceeded 
across the wood till we came in sight of a clearing, 
and at the corner where the fields made an angle, 
stood a few scattered evergreens, directly back of 

A REMARKABLE SCENT. 

which the dog seemed to lead. All at once he 
stopped and would go no further. The ground was 
bare ; there was no game in sight, and looking at the 
dog I saw his eye brighten, the pupil of his eye 
dilate and he threw his head partly around looking 
over his shoulder toward me. I came pretty near 
calling him an old fool. A thought struck me and 
I looked up in the nearest evergreen and there not 
twenty feet from where I stood a partridge was 
sitting on a dry limb close to the body of the tree, 
and raising my gun slowly I took off his head. The 
dog was satisfied. He dropped his tail into its usual 
position and started off for more birds. This is the 
only instance I have known of a dog getting a trail 
over the whole route that a bird has just passed. 
Possibly a half hour elapsed from the time the bird 
crossed the road and the dog took the trail. He cer- 



A REMARKABLE SCENT. 33 

tainly could not have taken the wind at that long 
distance where the bird sat in the tree. 

Sometimes President Hopkins' boys went with 
me, and along- that White Oak road as we were 
coming down we ran across a mink going up the 
middle of the stream, which we killed and the boys 
preserved and stuffed the skin for me. The fur 
has not perceptibly changed since I first got it, and 
the sight of it always refreshes my recollections of 
those days, and of the two boys, one of whom was 
Archie and the other Lawrence. One other brother 
is now president of the college. 

WOODCOCKS ON HILL SIDES. 

A short time after and a little above where this 
incident happened I had been circling round the 
north side of a piece of timberland late in the after- 
noon. The shadows were falling and it was quite 
cool on the north side. I struck a flock of part- 
ridges, which pushed on ahead of me toward a fine 
piece of bottom land, where a few scattering pines 
and considerable underbrush appeared. Passing 
down the last rise from the bottom, Jack set a wood- 
cock on a dry side hill, but the bushes were quite 
close and about ten feet high, so that you were com- 
pelled to shoot within a little more than that distance. 
I raised one bird and then another, and in the space 
of three or four rods, I think, I must have found 
nearly a dozen. I shot two or three, but had no 
particular use for them, as I had no market. I had 
been told by the Gay boys of this particular habit 
of the birds in the fall when they flew south. After- 
wards I found it of very material use, without which 
I should have many times gone home light handed. 
1 remember this circumstance very particularly, be- 



34 WOODCOCKS ON HlLL SIDES. 

cause as I came down to the Hoosic River by the 
bridge I saw something coming down the river, not 
very far from the shore, and the thought struck me 
all at once that that was a fish of some kind floating 
on its back. I ran quickly across the bridge on the 
other side, in time to reach it with a stick and pull it 
ashore. It was a magnificent trout, the largest one 
I had ever seen. The weather was cold, the fish 
Was in perfect condition and just back of its for- 
ward fins there was the marks where it had been 
caught by a wire and it had broken loose and got 
away. I took that trout to Mrs. Sabin and it fur- 
nished a breakfast for all the boarders. 

Now this dog Jack was a very remarkable speci- 
men of his kind, and while he had such a fine nose, 
he had other qualities which were not as agreeable. 
He had some day been misused, either in his first 
training or afterwards, and you were never quite 
sure in the morning whether he would make you 
good sport or poor throughout the day. There were 

PARTRIDGES HOLD SCENT. 

certain motions the hunter might make or certain 
words he might carelessly use which seemed to 
frighten the dog, and he would lie down and all the 
coaxing could not get him ahead again. There were 
times when birds were lying all around you when 
he seemed to have lost the scent or the birds lost 
theirs, and he did not succeed in finding any. Not 
far from the same White Oaks on another occasion 
there flew up before me and across the creek 
at one time twenty partridges in succession. The 
underbrush was not thick or heavy, a few old logs 
lay about, over which a little thicket had grown. 
I set the dog to work and it seemed as though he left 



PARTRIDGES HOLD SCENT. 36 

no spot untrod. He searched out this thicket with 
scrupulous nicety and raised only one bird, which 
flew out on the opposite side so I did not get a shot 
at him. I hunted the adjoining timberland out for 
twenty or thirty rods on each side with the dog 
working as faithfully as he possibly could, and 
found nothing. On another occasion we were south- 
west of the city and we ran into a fine flock of birds. 
They did not make off or try to escape, several of 
them ran along before me in plain sight and Jack 
took the notion that something was wrong and lay 
down. I was considerably provoked and gave him 
a cuff or two, when he jumped up as if everything 
was settled, ran into the brush ahead of me, turned 
around and lay down ag-ain. He had been whipped 
some time evidently and had ran away till this be- 
came a passion to him and there was no remon- 
strance. Whipping and coaxing did him no good 
whatever. In my disgust I raised my gun and with- 
out hardly a thought what I was doing I gave him 
the load. That was the last of Jack and I felt so 
bad that I actually left the scene, the country and 
the city forever. 

Some time later there came an inquiry to the 
village for a school teacher, from Madison, Conn., 
and I accepted the offer and at the beginning of 
December set out to fill the bill. It was not a hard 
berth ; the people were cultivated, of an exceedingly 

GO WEST, YOUNG MAN. 

pleasant and agreeable disposition and social almost 
to a fault, and we got along well till spring. Then 
school closed for the summer and I was out of a 
job. Some time during my vacation in the fall pre- 
ceding, I killed partridges and woodcocks about 



36 GO WEST, YOUNG MAN. 

Carmel, and when I could get enough I sent them 
away to. market. Our market town was then first 
at Croton Falls and later at Brewster Station, where 
the milk wagons ran every day, and where I soon 
found a New 1 York man shipped a car of butter, eggs 
and meat once or twice each week, and in colder 
weather handled poultry and game. I sent down 
a few birds and they brought very good prices. I 
increased my shipments and later I saw the shipper 
and he said to me, "You are such a hunter, I should 
think you would go west to Illinois, where there is 
plenty of game. We have plenty of prairie chick- 
ens in November and December and the months 
following, and find a good market." The man had 
a very pleasant look, seemed honest as my neigh- 
bors, and I was quite pleased with him. I found his 
family had originally come from Bedford, not many 
miles away. I had uncles in Illinois also, who, 
whenever they were on a visit with us, told of the 
great amount of prairie chickens and quails there 
were in that country. I had never seen a time bet- 
ter to go than now. I embraced the opportunity, 
added to the small list of goods a dog, bird dog, of 
course, which I bought from Smith, the only local 
hunter in Madison, and he was both a good one and 
his dog. He had no bad habits, and three days later 
I was on the Illinois River at Peru, where I landed 
the 14th day of June, 1855, a time of year when 
birds are not hunted. However, with the dog I 
could not miss seeing game entirely, and on the 
banks of the Vermillion I discovered a few wood- 
cocks. I knew' of no sale for them. There was also 
quite a few grass plover that I saw as I went to 
town and back on the road to my uncle's. I pa- 
tiently waited chicken time, which I was told was 



THE PRAIRIE LAND. 37 

the first of August. After quite a stay I took the 
railroad to Henry, and a little later to another uncle's 
six miles further in the country. There I found 
another hunter, and in connection with him the 
birds we killed and the sport we had would sound 
like a tale that was told, which nobod\ would be- 
lieve. Prairie chickens were everywhere on the 
prairie. ' We could scare up five or six flocks, pos- 
sibly a dozen when going through one stubble field, 
and the flocks were large. It was no use to kill 
many, so we contented ourselves with a limited 
number, as many as the family could eat and as 
many as we could give away to our neighbors. We 
had no price for them. Our only desire was to 
clear up the surplus and start in with a new catch. 
A hundred birds a week was all that we could dis- 
pose of, when we could have killed five hundred as 
well. As the season became later, quails appeared 
in large numbers, more plentifully around the 
thickets and along the water courses, but plenty 
enough in the corn fields. There were neither 
buyers nor sellers at that early day. Cold weather 
came on, a buyer in town offered me $1.50 a dozen 
for chickens and seventy-five cents for quails, but 
his ambition was soon gratified for taking large 
lots, and he dropped the price to fifty cents per 
dozen for quail, at which price I could not kill 
them. I went down below Henry on the east side 
the latter part of October, and there the quantity 
of ducks to be seen passed all records. There were 
men there shooting for market, but the most they 
could get for mallards was $1.50 per dozen. What 
I killed we ate. I went into the bushes a mile below 
town, where a lake empties into the river, and 
there I found woodcock quite plenty and my people 
were well pleased with them, and I passed the time 



1 



38 THE PRAIRIE LAND. 

between that point and the river, sometimes killing 
ducks, and I actually did kill one goose, and why 
I could not kill more no man could tell. Hundreds 
of them passed over my head every day, sO close 
I could see their eyes, which is an infallible sign that 

GET MARRIED. 

they were within reach, and the shot would rattle 
against their feathers like hail and never one come 
down, except in this one instance. Then I went 
back to the prairie again for a while and while I 
was shooting a few chickens I saw approaching 
across the prairie, which was then entirely bare, not 
a house in sight for miles, a brant. 

He came within gun shot and I unloaded on him. 
He did not stop but passed directly on, and I 
watched that bird till he was at least a half a mile 
in the distance, a speck in the horizon. All at once 
he whirled suddenly around, came back again di- 
rectly towards me and this time I felled him. As we 
were going to town the next day we passed through 
a long range of timber, where were large numbers 
of pigeons, moving about in flocks. I fired at them 
to see how many I could bring down at one shot, 
and I gathered up nearly a basketful. As the 
weather got still colder, I followed along a little run 
at the foot of the high prairie, along where Spring- 
Creek now runs, and found a few snipe of exactly 
the same kind as I had formerly killed in New 
York State, but there was no sale for them and I 
did not try to get them. Before I left Henry in the 
fall my uncles' folks transferred me to another 
brother, who lived on Chenoweth Prairie in Bureau 
County, and I think I was the least unpopular there 
than at any other of the brothers, At that time I 



VISITS RELATION. 39 

had an attack of ague and was blowing hot and 
cold, and a quiet bed was the one thing needed, and 
my uncle was very kind to me, his patience was 
tireless and he furnished me a horse and sent me 
to Boyd's Grove, where I got a bottle of Christie's 
Ague Balsam, which knocked the enemy out from 
his encampment within me of more than thirty 
days. I became so much improved that when a 
neighbor farmer said he would just like to peel me, 
I said all right, I am just green enough to be peeled 
and now is your opportunity. 

Uncle Joe was an old timer and had never seen 
wing shooting. I took him out with me one day to 
please him and he seemed to enjoy himself greatly. 
After that his son Dan wanted the same dose, but 
he wisely chose a horse and rode behind me, Sport 
leading ahead fierce for birds. Dan carried the sack 
which was to hold the game. We had not got out 
very far on the prairie when the dog pointed, and 
sure enough up went a flock of chickens. Two 
birds fell and they were quickly transferred to the 
sack and we followed around after scattered parts 
of the flock till we struck another and still another 
until we thought w'e had all that the family could 
use, and calling off the dog I went a little distance 
to where Dan was sitting on his horse watching 
our motions. As I approached him I said : "Count 
the birds and see how many you have got," as I 
thought we would not need any more. He had just 
five, the rest he had scattered around on the prairie, 
following me and not knowing he had a large hole in 
the bottom of the sack, which let them fall out as 
fast as they were put in. The grass was knee deep 
and it was impossible to look them up that day. 

In straggling around from one place to another, I 
did the worst thing that ever could happen ; I got 



40 VISITS RELATION. 

married. That is, it was the worst thing for her ; 
I might have done better; she certainly could have 
done no worse. I was practically an outcast ; there 
was no one to take me in ; there were plenty to 
throw me out, but the air was free, the sky was 
above me to save me in the last resource. I could 
teach ; twice I did it with fair success, but I did not 
care to follow it. I could walk behind a harrow and 
this I did for a farmer for five long days, beginning 
Tuesday and ending Saturday night, when I re- 
ceived five dollars. Asked if I would be on again 
Monday morning, I replied, "Not on that kind of a 
nest." I went home to my mother-in-law. As we 
got up in the morning she said I could take a pail 
and go out to milk the cow. I did not milk the cow 
and I hope it did not hurt her. I went to town, saw 
a few chickens on the road, saw a fence lined with 
them and I began to study what I could do with them 
in case I got them. I went east through Bradford 
and on the way saw immense quantities of golden 
plover, passing to the northeast. The skv was 
spotted with them, as I had seen wild pigeons in 
New York State. I saw no way of turning them 
into cash. As a married couple, we thought we 
would go east and see our relatives in the spring, 
and on the 7th day of May, 1857, we left for New 
York City. The weather was unusually cold and 
I have never seen such a spring before or since. At 
that date there was no grass to feed cattle ; every- 
thing that supported them had to come from the 
mow or the stack. The day before we left I went 
down on Indian Creek to kill a few snipe which I 
had seen there quite plenty a few days before. 
There was not one to be found, but there were a 
few grass plover in pairs about the fields and of 
these I killed quite a number, and added to these I 



LEARNS IN NEW YORK OF ENGLISH SNIPE. 41 

put one chicken. These I put inside the trunk, 
where, after a passage of three days, it was no sur- 
prise that the birds I had were a little tender, but I 
took them out of my trunk and proceeded to sell 
them on the streets of the city. I got as far as 
Washington Market, when the buyers were so 
plenty and eager to buy and so thoroughly blocked 
my way that I was compelled to stop and put a 
price on them, and though the price seemed enor- 
mous, they were soon disposed of at what I asked. 
Not a policeman stood in the way ; not a soul asked 
me what I was going to do with that prairie chicken. 
The dealer before whose stand I negotiated my 
trade had apparently a half bushel of small, dirty 
birds, water soaked and of such a hue it was hard 
to tell what manner of game they were, and at my 
inquiry what they were and what they were worth 
he assured me that they were English snipe ; that 
they were worth three dollars a dozen, and that he 
Would give me that price for all I could get that 
spring. It was too late for further shipments that 
season, but I formed in my mind what I would do 
with them the next year. Added to this I had 
found woodcocks plentifully in the woods adjoining 
the open lands where I found the snipe. Prairie 
chickens could be found everywhere in Illinois at 
that time. The corn fields were full of them in the 
fall, golden plover in countless droves flew over the 
fields in April and May, and with the ducks in 
thousands, it did not seem a bad proposition, to kill 
and market them if I could ship them safely to a 
market a thousand miles away. How this was ac- 
complished we shall try to relate. Henry County is 
our starting point. It is fortunate in many respects, 
it is fortunate in its rivers, which, beginning with 
small and unimportant creeks, flow into Green River, 



42 HENRY COUNTY IN 1855. 

thence into Rock, and finally into the Mississippi be- 
low Rock Island, or the waters might take another 
direction and flow into the Illinois. It is a productive 
county with rich, arable soil, sloping slowly back 
from the river banks, making a perfect water shed 
which rains cannot inundate. It is in the Military 
Tract which the government set off to pension the 
soldiers and which embraces the counties of Adams, 
Henry, Stark and Bureau, lying north of the Illi- 
nois River. In describing the appearance of Henry 
County in the early fifties, we can better designate 
what it was not than what it was. It was a new 
country and new people, and settlements were few. 
You could travel almost in any direction outside 
the limits of small towns and tracts of timber where 
settlements were begun without being harassed with 
fences. Probably more than half of the land was 
unoccupied. The prairie land was largely neglected. 
The settlers came from the East, where timber was 
plenty ; it was a luxury here. What trees were stand- 
ing were scorched and scarred where the forest fires 
had run through them. Their skeleton arms threw 
dark shadows over the highways. The highways 
stole softly around the hill sides or they clambered 
up where a ravine threatened to obstruct them, they 
paid no moment to section lines. Sloughs that had 
little or no travel in rainy weather were impassable* 
Sometimes they were bridged, or had been, or had a 
few round logs thrown across, which threatened you 
with a delay, if not with a bath. The woods, where 
they were fenced, threw up a heavy undergrowth of 
shoots and wiry grass and young bushes fertilized 
with the rains upon decaying embers. In the low 
grounds along the creeks and streams the cucum- 
ber vines flung great arbors which it was impossible 
to walk or drive through. Vines of wild grapes 



WHAT WAS AND WHAT WAS NOT. 43 

hung from the blackened limbs and shrouded in deep 
mourning the enwrapped forest. Wild plums, with 
their ripened color and perfume, covered the hill- 
sides. Little streams here and there trickled down. 
The surplusage was held in tiny craters which did 
not run into the rivers or the sea. Tile and tiling 
were unknown. On the prairies it seemed desola- 
tion, neglected by man, a wilderness of waste land, 
it was roamed over by wild birds in the day time. 
The wolf sat and whined on the hill side or set up 
his sharp, short cry as evening set in. Cattle were 
few in the cultivated fields, on the prairies they 
herded or roamed in small bands. The summer heat 
was terribly oppressive. As Fall came on the 
heavens were vocal with birds heading south. In 
the Spring they remained until May. Thousands of 
pigeons in the cultivated fields and some nested 
in the country. Cranes stalked abroad in Spring and 
Fall on the open lands. Some nested here. Their 
call was caught up by moving flocks in the heavens 
as the summer days came on. The fields seemed 
nearer the heavens, farm houses clustered along 
strips of timber, the dews fell neither in few nor 
sparse drops. Your neighbor was distant, perhaps 
many miles, your crops brought low prices and 
transportation by wagon to market was long and 
arduous. The little cash you had was like the sur- 
vival of the fittest, not to be measured in value by 
things around you. You must pay taxes, but few 
things you could sell. You did not want many 
things. Taste and fashion did not live where you 
dwelt. You raised your own meat, you could and 
did often do without it. With grated corn you made 
bread for your breakfast ; mills were miles distant, 
and your travel there was necessarily infrequent. In 
time you fenced your acres and improved them, but 



U RAILROADS COMING. 

you were not anxious to add to them. They were of 
no certain value, nor any great value. If you were 
sick you suffered in silence, or drove long distances 
for a" physician to cure you or a priest to pray for 
you. Out in the corner of the field, on that little 
rising ground, the story was told, if told at all, of 
vour family, of its members as it came and went, 
of the little corner reserved for someone, your wife, 
if remaining, and for you. 

HOT WEATHER A BURDEN 

With the coming of the railroads new life was in- 
fused in the County and State. The C, B. & Q. came 
in the southern part of the county in 1854. The Rock 
Island in the northern part two or three years later. 
Crops of wheat and corn began to be called for; 
farms that lately had no cash value brought good 
returns from the crop wnen corn was selling at fifty 
cents and wheat at one dollar fifty per bushel. Many 
farms paid first cost with only one crop. Little sta- 
tions started here and there along the line of the 
railroad every few miles. All kinds of wares the 
farmers needed were offere'd for sale ; the roads that 
traversed between towns began to be improved. 
Fences were built up, the lines straightened. Many 
farms that skirted the timber broadened out into the 
prairies, and increased their pasture where the land 
was not tillable. Labor brought good wages. Many 
of the comforts of life were lacking. Malaria was in 
the air. In the low lands sickness was almost uni- 
versal, and mosquitoes a torment to man and beast. 
No contrivance existed that could keep them out of 
the house unless the doors were closed ; blinds and 
screens were unknown. By reason of the fences you 
could not dodge the sloughs and go around them; 
many roads had no bridges at all, or they were built 



ICE AND GUNS SCARCE. 45 

far away where the old roads traversed. Where the 
roads had been worked in the Fall and built up 
they were impassable in April ; rains fell unceasing- 
ly ; travelers went on horseback and left their ve- 
hicles mired in the roadway. Where one horse went 
in it took two to draw it out ; flies, insects and sum- 
mer heat were the portion of all. The railroads did 
little to foster trade ; their trains were infrequent, 
their time little better for passengers or perishable 
goods than present freight trains ; it took three days 
to reach New York. The express on perishable 
goods was high and often prohibitory. As a con- 
sequence, many goods perished ; many goods that 
were consigned to distant markets were never re- 
ported by the consignees, if they received them. 
Losses were seldom paid and seldom recouped by 
new shipments. As a consequence, trade languished 
in all but the necessaries of life and goods in which 
slow time was unavoidable. There was no cold 
storage heard of, no refrigerators and no inquiry 
for them. Even ice w r as obtainable in summer only 
in towns and villages, and in limited quantities any- 
where outside of large cities ; the price was so high 
but few people except butchers supplied themselves ; 
the means of cutting and storing it in winter were 
crude, and it Was often hauled from long distances. 
Guns were few and of poor quality. The farmers 
and householders had only what they brought with 
them when as pioneers they came into the country. 
Rifles prevailed ; muzzle shotguns were few and 
hardly obtainable ; the whole country could not have 
shown a respectable wagon load. In the w r inter time, 
during snows, prairie chickens perched on the 
fences, or on the old, swaying, croaking oaks that 
had not fallen on the hillsides, and morning and 
evening gathered around the unpicked cornfields. 



46 SWARMS OF GAME, NO MARKET. 

What birds were killed were perforated with rifle 
balls and of little value; if they were ever marketed 
it was in the winter and for short periods only, and 
then disposed of in neighboring villages or sent to 
Chicago. Game dogs were hardly thought of. Un- 
til 1857 there was not a bird shipped out of Henry 
County in warm weather farther than Chicago. With 
the increase of new farms, game birds increased per- 
ceptibly, the grass sprung up everywhere where 
forest fires were kept out, and the quail nested and 
were prodigal of large flocks where the springing 
bushes supported the tangled vines and held up the 
grass tops. The cornfields distant from the woods 
harbored the chickens as soon as the corn was high 
enough for shelter, and they built their nests and 
... multiplied on the hillsides not very far away. 
Woodcock were plenty along the streams in sum- 
mer. Snipe and plover fed along the low outlying 
lands in Spring and Fall in great numbers, and 
bred abundantly in the swamps, which were never 
drained. Immense flocks came and went during 
their passage North and South, the Whole bottom 
land north of Annawan was one hideous squawking 
of ducks and geese and cranes which could be heard 
for miles in March and April. Moving herds and 
droves that made the circuit of the farms every day 
to feed, returned at nightfall to whiten the marsh 
and confuse and drown every sweet note and voice 
until they disappeared. Nobody seemed to think 
there was any market for any game anywhere ex- 
cept in cold weather, nobody knew how to pack in 
hot weather. Wing shooting was so seldom seen or 
practiced that a good shot was set upon as one to be 
watched and in general avoided. In the summer of 
1858 we shipped our first box of grouse to New 
York, ice packed. The express was six dollars per 



feEGIN SHIPMENTS OI? PRAIRIE CHICKENS, il 

hundred, and the box was packed so heavily with ice 
that, although the birds brought seventy-five cents 
per pair, we got but a few dollars out of it. About 
one-half of the birds were green and they brought 
only about half price. Two things we learned we 
must now do ; we must cut down the weight of our 
packages by using less ice and lighter boxes, and we 
must draw our birds when we killed them. We 
kept the birds out of the reach of flies. We bought 
some birds when we could do it favorably to keep 
our stock fresh and make frequent shipments. We 
were the onlv shippers in the market, but the trade 
was new and weak, and in a week or two more we 
forwarded more birds than the market could use. 
We were advised to hold a few days until the mar- 
ket recovered. To do so we had to cut off our help. 
When it was gone we were ordered to send more 
birds, and so we seesawed one day with another, 
now a surplus and then a dearth, until the season 
passed away. We got not much cash, but we did 
get the experience, which was more necessary, that 
we could kill and market in hot weather and expect 
moderate margins. The limitations which had been 
so frequent at first we began by steady sieges to 
work off. When cold weather came the demand in- 
creased rapidly and we could not find game to sup- 
ply it. Quail were wanted in October and Novem- 
ber and months following, and by increasing my 
staff of hunters, we made many strong shipments 
and received very good returns. We moved over 
to Geneseo and was in that neighborhood hunting 
for several years until the defenders of the noble art 
became jealous of us and made such war upon us 
that we shifted our quarters to other parts of the 
county and to Kewanee, but never left the county 
only for short seasons afterward. 



48 A VISIT TO ANAWAN. 

In the Spring of 1858 we traveled on foot to An- 
nawan, the first time we ever saw that village, in- 
tending to hunt English snipe if we could find them, 
as they were wanted in New York. There were only 
two men hunting there at that time beside us, and 
they were entirely engaged in killing ducks and 
geese. I endeavored to find out from them if there 
were any jacksnipe around there, or if they had ever 
seen any, and they could not even tell me what a 
jack snipe was. Snipes there were in plenty, they 
said, but When I came to pin them down they turned 
out mostly to be sand snipe of very little value, and 
finally they declared they would not spend their time 
killing such little birds if there were any. Pointing 
in the direction of the marsh, they said, "Look over 
there," where the ducks and geese were flying in 
thousands, "that is the kind of game we are hunt- 
ing, and that is worth something." It was now 
about the first of April, no snipe as yet appearing ; 
and I accompanied the two hunters for a few days 
waiting for snipe to come, and we killed ducks and 
geese in abundance, but there was little sale for 
them and that was soon supplied, and the only re- 
turns we could get was to strip the birds for their 
feathers. In two hours' shooting in one afternoon 
I loaded a horse with all he could carry and rode to 
Kewanee and sold the birds there. 

We usually shot late in the afternoon, and camp- 
ing out over night on one of the small islands, took 
in the morning flight and then returned to town till 
the afternoon again. We established our camp fire 
where our hunt ended, hung up our trophies on the 
adjoining trees, and turned in under cover of a few 
blankets. Some time in the night I began to feel 
uncomfortably warm on waking up, when I dis- 
covered my coat was on fire, and rushing up I called 



KILL THE FIRST JACKSNIPE. 49 

out to Bice and Porter, the two hunters, to "put me 
out," "put me out," which they proceeded to do in 
the most primitive and unstinted fashion, v In his 
last days Bice never forgot to mention that occur- 
rence whenever I met him and to inquire if I had 
been put out any more afterwards. Until the 15th 
of April very few snipe appeared. What few came 
w r ere of poor flesh, and as I had not yet got used to 
shooting with my left hand and could hot discharge 
the gun with my right hand, which had been 
crippled, they did not suffer much from me. When 
a bird flew to the right I could shoot as well as ever, 
but to the left it was much more difficult. On the 
morning of April 16th there was quite a fall of 
snow ; in the course of the forenoon it warmed up 
rapidly, little streams of water formed and ran along 
the highway and emptied into the gutters until they 
were full and overflowing, and the open space around 
the depot was soft and muddy. A little to the north- 
east some sags formed in the surface the water ran 
into and formed little ponds several rods around 
them, and further on into Latham's, as it then was, 
the ponds were larger and the mud was heavier and 
deeper, so that we did not go there for a day or two. 
On that first day in the village of Annawan, with- 
in the limits of Railroad Square, we saw and sum- 
moned to surrender more jack snipe than we had 
before seen alive in all our life. Any good shot of 
this day would have killed one hundred birds easily 
where we barely killed forty. In a few days George 
Mowcroft associated himself with us and we took 
southwest from Annawan around the edge of Mud 
Creek and the low lands adjoining. We found snipe 
very plenty and golden plover were flying in large 
flocks across our track every few minutes where you 
could kill from three to six birds at a shot, and no 



50 GEO. MOWCROFT. 

unusual thing to bring down ten or twelve. We had 
not learned the philosophy of using a team and 
wagon, and if we had we should have found it too 
expensive, and we let flesh and muscle bear the 
strain. George was an unusually good hunter. He 
never wanted to ship and I had to buy his birds. He 
followed with me for two or three years in the win- 
ter season, sometimes in Knox County, sometimes 
elsewhere, but he was always on hand in the Spring 
till prices fell so low in two or three years that he 
abandoned the game business altogether. If he had 
waited for the reaction he could have done a fine 
thing for himself, but he finally became discouraged 
and went to Nebraska, where I lost sight of him, 
and where, I learned, he afterwards died. No 
weather was too cold or too' hot for him if there was 
a bird to be shot or a mink to be caught, and so he 
had funds enough to cover his expenses he cared 
for nothing further. When he went away I was 
owing him quite a sum, which still remains in rav 
hands subject to the rightful claimant. However, 
we continued to kill with little help till the first week 
in May, when the weather became very warm and 
the birds left us during one night. Our last ship- 
ments were damaged somewhat by heat, as we did 
not use ice and did not know how to use it, but 
Messrs. Robbins informed us we should break it up, 
mix it with sawdust and lay it on the birds, which 
we afterwards did. At that time all our sound 
snipe sold from 18 to 21 cents each, and golden 
plover at something less, about 12 to 15 cents. 

In the summer I associated myself for a while 
with George Cutmore, who was said to be a good 
shot and had the best dog in Kewanee. I think the 
latter statement was true, as I used one of his pups 
afterwards, which I named Sancho, of blessed mem- 



GEO. CUTMORE AND DORR AND HlGGlNS. 5l 

ory. With a Mr. Dorr, who furnished horse and 
wagon, we went west three or four miles and on the 
side of a hill in a wheat field we found a flock of 
chickens late in the afternoon. Dorr was a few rods 
away and the first bird that rose between Cutmore 
and myself was killed instantly. The moment rt 
dropped Cutmore rushed for it and shouted, I 
killed that," without waiting for anyone else to claim 
it, put it in his bag and proceeded to load. He 
dumped in his load of powder in a great hurry, 
and, raising the hammer to renew the cap, he was 
surprised to find his gun had not gone off, and he 
had two loads in his gun instead of one. This 
created a great laugh and he took out the chicken 
and threw it over to me. In the rush he made to get 
the bird he frightened up the remainder of the flock 
and we only secured two or three of them. We did 
not take Cutmore with us any more, and Dorr and 
myself hunted by ourselves. We could not find any 
outlet for our birds at home, although we offered 
them at one dollar per dozen. In Chicago some sold 
at two dollars, but if we had any old birds among 
them we could not get over a dollar or a dollar and 
a half. About this time, in August, pigeons began 
coming into the wheat fields five miles away from 
here, and Mr. Elliott, of the city, frequently asked to 
accompany me. We went out on the Frye place 
and in one afternoon we killed in the neighborhood 
of two hundred. Mr. Elliott took all he wanted and 
I shipped twelve dozen to Chicago, but never could 
■ get any track of what became of them. Altogether, 
the trade was not flattering, and Mr. Dorr soon gave 
it up. After that Charles Taylor and Clint Higgins 
brought in birds and I began packing for New York. 
In the first shipment of which we have reported 
of prairie chickens we had a few quail which brought 



52 GO TO GENESEO WITH WM. BOWEN. 

twenty cents each, and these being light to ship left 
us a good margin when we bought at one dollar per 
dozen. We decided to try Geneseo, and in October, 
with five or six men, we went there. We killed 
along Green River hundreds of quails and they 
brought us about fifteen cents each. My first check 
from A. & E. Robbins was over eighty dollars, and 
I presented the same to Mr. Squires, the landlord 
of the Howard House, as the present Geneseo House 
was then called, for our board, and it frightened 
him. Board was then only three dollars per week 
and it did not count up very fast. We stayed there 
ten or twelve days and so many men came in and 
wanted to hunt I let our home crew return and 
trusted to this new contingent to supply its place. I 
also hired William Bowen to furnish team and hunt 
with me, which he did for over a year. In that time 
we had shipped from Geneseo over five tons of game 
and were getting a little start when the disturbance 
came on, as before related. In that time we had 
become acquainted with every hunter of note in that 
country, and my going back to Kewanee and later 
opening up at Atkinson was no disaster to the trade. 
From Atkinson I received all the birds north that 
was killed, and I operated there until New Years 
and bought much poultry. Everything prospered 
reasonably well. In the Spring heavy lots of snipe 
and plover would come in and I packed them 
promptly on ice, then placed them close in single 
boxes without ice, and they went through in safety 
to New York. Sometimes we met the Joles' at the 
Green River Bridge, and once, when that bridge 
was washed away, they ferried their game over to us 
in skiffs. I carried in my buggy a full supply of 
ammunition and sold it to them to be paid for in 
birds. After a while I had some trouble with some 



GOES TO ATKINSON IN WINTER. 53 

outsiders that did not pay up and I changed my 
plan. Instead of paying for the birds and after- 
wards selling out the goods on trust, I inquired of 
each man what ammunition he wanted, laid it aside 
for him, counted out his birds, took pay for the am- 
munition and cashed the balance. Mr. Joles would 
say, "Merritt is getting sharp, he does not believe in 
paying for game and trusting out the goods at the 
same time." 

After 1863 I did not go into Knox County again, 
but hunted through the winter, sometimes at Colona 
and sometimes in Iowa, but the hunters continued to 
meet me and bring in wagon loads of birds when- 
ever they could reach me. In this way I received 
several thousand quails that were brought by Joles 
and Beers to Kewanee. After spring shooting was 
over we hunted woodcocks on Green and Rock 
River, Commencing about June 15th and lasting till 
July 1 st. After that time we went up the Missis- 
sippi, after 1861, and hunted there till October. 
Some of the time we went into Iowa for chickens 
after 1869, but always was home again in Atkinson 
for the fall trade. From 1865 to 1870 the chicken 
shooting was good around Atkinson at first, and 
later on the Edwards River, and I found it much 
more profitable to hunt them than snipe or quail in 
the fall, except in cloudy weather. About 1870 I 
went to Atkinson in October, as usual, and south of 
the Grove to my usual haunts, and I came home ter- 
ribly discouraged. I found very few chickens along 
Mud Creek and west of there, where I had before 
found them plenty, and the market price was not 
improved, so I decided I could do better business 
only to buy and not to hunt regularly. Then for two 
or three years, till the summer of 1873, I hunted fit- 
fully, bought more poultry, had to employ help in 



54 PRAIRIE CHICKENS NEARLY EXTERMINATED 

packing, and met and corresponded with hunters 
wherever I could find them, and started a nice trade 
west of the Mississippi, about 1880, to compensate 
my loss here and supply my increased customers. 
This is the outline for fifteen years, which the fol- 
lowing pages will endeavor to fill out. 

In 1859 I was at Geneseo, as related, and went to 
New York with a small carload of game. On com- 
ing out of the city I met, at Jersey City, a man of 
middle age who told me he was coming west to 
Henry County, to Colona, and I rode with him to 
Chicago. H'e said he had bought some property in 
Colona and was going to build a hotel there. In 
the previous fall I became acquainted with a hunter 
by the name of Bacon, about five or six miles north- 
west of Geneseo, who told me that quails were very 
plenty between his place and Colona, and I went 
down there in the early spring when the ice was 
breaking up and boarded with Mr. Sharp, who kept 
the hotel, and shot quails through all that hilly coun- 
try, sometimes with two or three hands beside me. 
When I was alone I tramped five or six miles or 
more up in the hills that adjoined Green River and 
sometimes camped out, made my fire and slept by it, 
and returned next day with two loads of quails on 
my back. It was most too cold to camp out with no 
cover, and I soon found a place where they would 
keep me over night close by, so I stayed there. 
When I camped out I could hear the deer snorting 
around at night in the timber and the next time I 
came that way, after lodging over night, I went 
out in the direction of where I had previously heard 
the deer snorting. This was the first day of April, 
i860, and it froze hard and was very cold that night. 
As my dog was running along through the brush on 
the side of a little sag in the woods, he suddenly 



KILL THE FIRST DEER. 



55 



pointed. I walked up expecting to find a flock of 
quails, when suddenly a deer sprang up from the 
cover, ran around the side of the hill so as to give 
me a square shot. I sighted behind his fore shoulder 
and blazed away at him. I never could tell how it 
happened but it seemed to break a leg. The shot 




Kills a Deer with Quail Shot. 



were very small and the deer carried that leg as in 
a sling, and I immediately fired the other barrel as 
he proceeded. I was rather dazed at the occur- 
rence which had so suddenly happened, but followed 
out into the woods in the direction which the deer 
had taken and in the course of twenty rods found 
him lying dead. I could not carry him but managed 
to pull him up into a tree where the wolves could 
not reach him and went back to Colona. I described 
the place so accurately that Mr. Sharp was able to 



56 KILL THE FIRST DEER. 

bring him in next day in his wagon. I brought in 
fifty or sixty quails each trip. When returning I 
depended entirely upon my dog, as I was so heavily 
loaded that when he found a flock I would throw 
down my load till I had killed what I could and then 
press on again. In returning I ran through a flock 
of pigeons that were lighting on the trees, 
and they were not wild, considering that the 
limbs were bare of leaves and I added a large 
number of them. They brought eighteen cents 
each, about the same as the quails. In a few days 
snipe began to appear and, putting them together, I 
made out a small box and shipped them to A. & E. 
Robbins, and they sold for twenty cents each. They 
did not come in plenty enough and I moved up to 
Geneseo. Later we shot quite a good many wood- 
cock on Green River northwest of the city after 
spring shooting was over and early in July. In 
August the birds were getting scarce there and I 
took a new man by the name of Samuel Cramer and 
we went over on Dutch Bottom, five or six miles 
north of Geneseo, to hunt chickens. We found a 
place to stop at the foot of the hills on your left 
as you descend into the valley of Rock River. I 
do not now remember the name of the family but 
we will care it Moore. The man was a hardy but 
slender looking pioneer and his wife was always ail- 
ing with some kind of disease, or else it was im- 
aginary, and the man was frequently called in from 
his work to assist her in getting the meals. He 
never manifested any impatience at her frequent 
calls and she was very tender towards him, always 
calling- him "Hubby" or "Hubby, dear." The wife's 
sister-in-law lived but a short distance away and 
was often called for when anything unusual oc- 
curred, or when any very sick spell happened, which 



TRAPPINCx BIG GAME. 



57 



Mrs. Moore was liable to get. When we came in 
at evening Mrs. Moore was in bed and she was 
groaning and carrying on awfully, and the hus- 
band was kept running constantly after one thing 
or another as the wife suggested, till he was nearly 
tired out. "Now, my dear/' she says, "my bed 
will have to be changed and you know you can't 
do it alone. Run over to John's and see if you 




Trapping Big Game. 



58 TRAPPING BIG GAME. 

can't get Antionette to help you." Cramer was 
near as Moore came out and he volunteered to go 
as Robert said he did not dare to leave. Cramer re- 
turned shortly and the two women proceeded to put 
the sick woman in order, while Cramer and Moore 
stood near ready to help if wanted. Mrs. Moore 
was lifted on the lounge while the bed was reno- 
vated and after many directions of "Now, Robert," 
"Robbie, dear," she was replaced as carefully as 
possible on the bed again. She did not seem to 
rest just right and Antoinette, who was standing 
at the foot, thought she would crawl under and 
see if she could not adjust the slats so as to raise 
the foot a little, and in so doing, she threw the 
weight all on one side. The slats broke down and 
the bottom of the bed caught her square on the 
back and held her down. Mrs. Moore was lying 
with her eyes closed. She felt the weight fall off 
from her feet, and while Cramer rushed to relieve 
Antoinette, Mrs. Moore sang out, "There, stop now, 
leave me where I am, I am perfectly easy." An- 
toinette was a big, stout woman, and it was some- 
time before we could get her out of the trap, and 
the sick woman could be made to understand how 
it was before she would consent to have her re- 
leased. 

We lived well at Moore's, had plenty of milk, bis- 
cuits and spring chickens, and we killed game fairly 
well. The most trouble we experienced was the large 
size of the flocks, which were not very numerous but 
would all rise at once, and the ground being en- 
tirely level, the birds would settle out of sight over 
some big corn field where it was difficult to find 
them. At last we hit upon the plan of one of us 
watching in the morning beyond the corn fields 
and when the birds rose out of the stubble, the 



WILD TURKEYS ON PENNY'S SLOUGH. 59 

other was able to watch them where they alighted 
and both of us would join in the hunt. Many times 
we nearly obliterated whole flocks. West of us half 
a mile or so was Penny's Slough and a large corn 
field lay east of it against the woods that crowned 
the hill, and there we found a good many woodcock 
fed and by coursing through the corn, taking four 
or five rows at a time, w r e killed a good many. As I 
was walking along the edge of the timber I came 
to some cord wood piled up, and on top of it sat a 
wild turkey which raised up over the trees when I 
was within twenty feet of it, and again right across 
the river, as a turkey was running along several 
rods before me I did not notice that it was wild until 
it started to fly, when it settled across the river op- 
posite to me, and very many tracks of a bear were 
seen as well as turkeys at Kempster's, where also 
one large bear was killed. This shows the wild na- 
ture of the country at that early period. 

COL. E. S. BOND. 

While hunting in the neighborhood of Cambridge 
several years later I used frequently to hear of Col. 
E. S. Bond as the greatest sportsman there, but I 
never met him till about the time of the great fire 
in Chicago. After the fire he was for some time 
just across the bridge, west of the river, doing a 
small commission business and handling some game, 
more especially partridges, and they were usually 
drawn. After he had removed back to South Water 
St., I met him often whenever I went to Chicago. 
He was a very pleasant man and gave me much in- 
formation in my line and his business increased 
largely in game till he bought and sold probably 
more than any other dealer in the city. He did not 



60 SHIPS FIRST CAR OF GAME TO NEW YORK. 

have any freezing facilities, for none existed in Chi- 
cago at that time. I had found that Chicago was a 
great entrepot for game, and by keeping in corre- 
spondence with him, I was always informed 
what price I could pay the hunters at home. 
I sent him some game to sell, but the better 
class of birds I reserved for New York. 
We had not learned how to pack birds well 
enough in warm weather that we followed it in the 
summer before 1861. When the Fall came hunters 
appeared as usual and brought in large quantities 
of birds to Geneseo. As the stock increased, prices 
declined. We had a great many mallards and when 
they would not bring me fifty cents per pair in New 
York by express, or more than that, we had to stop 
shipping. When prices got at their lowest point 
and the weather got cold I went to packing quails 
and chickens in boxes and freezing them. I could 
buy chickens for ten cents each and quails for six, 
and when I had accumulated about fifty boxes and 
barrels I went with them by freight to New York. 
When I got there Messrs. Robbins seemed to have 
all the trade in my line. They wanted, however, 
they said, only quail, and for these they were will- 
ing to pay two dollars per dozen. They also offered 
me thirty cents per pair for the chickens, which was 
as good as I could get from commission men, and I 
turned the whole shipment over to the first named 
party, to whom I paid no commission. I remained 
in the city but two or three days, but before I left 
the price of chickens or grouse, as they were called, 
advanced to sixty-two and a half cents. My whole 
profit was in the quail. I spent over a month get- 
ting this shipment together and the speculator had 
then taken them at his own price. I studied over 
this a long while to see if I could not hereafter avoid 



MYRIADS OF SNIPE ON THE BIG SLOUGH. 61 

this corner, and eventually succeeded, and I believe 
this firm paid me well for so doing. I hurried back 
to Geneseo, and through a friend of mine, we gath- 
ered up a good many more birds, on which we real- 
ized the advanced price without paying any more for 
them. I went to Iowa, took a few hunters with me, 
and in the course of a month, gathered up a small 
carload of chickens and quails, mostly the former, 
paving one dollar per dozen for them, and freighted 
them as far as Chicago. I could get them no far- 
ther, unless the freight was prepaid or guaranteed, 
and I finally expressed them the rest of the way to 
New York, and by that means lost all my contem- 
plated profit. 

In the Spring of 1859 we ^t tne country around 
Annawan and Colona and commenced shooting snipe 
on the Big Slough, northeast of the city. Prices 
were good until about the middle of April and snipe 
were plenty. We killed frequently sixty or seventy 
birds a day each. Several hunters from the city 
joined us, our shipments were frequent, and from 
two dollars a dozen at the beginning, the market 
suddenly fell to ten cents each, and later to five 
cents each, at which price several fine boxes were 
sold in New York for us by commission men. This 
did not cover first cost, and in our despair over the 
prospect we called to mind the knowledge we had 
gained from Mr. Blunt, and leaving the commission 
men, we went to the firm of A. & E. Robbins, of 
Fulton Market. It was nearing the last of the sea- 
son and, to our surprise, we got prompt sales at one 
dollar per dozen. In a day or two they advanced to 
$1.20, then to $1.50, and lastly to $2.00, at which 
price several considerable shipments went in. We 
reopened trade with Annawan and many birds came 
from that quarter. The birds were very fat and the 



62 MYRIADS OF SNIPE ON THE BIG SLOUGH. 

inquiry so great we struck out anew on the Big 
Slough and went farther up this time to the neigh- 
borhood of Deacon Kemis' at the last point of tim- 
ber on the right as you go north, near which was an 
old crossing. In later years I found William Morris 
camped here with all his strange and unsightly be- 
longings. Within twenty rods of his camp our 
wagon load of hunters and loafers proceeded to do 
business, one and all. Some of them, not knowing 
anything about wing shooting, and in that part of 
a day we saw more snipe than we had ever seen be- 
fore or since. The different members of the party 
spread out on either side of the Slough, so that 
probably we covered a space north and south of a 
mile. The guns went off at frequent intervals, so 
that it sounded like the ticking of a clock, and as the 
sun was getting low we brought in our birds and 
found that we had over six hundred. A few years 
later the same company would have killed a thousand 
in that time. 

PRICES DECLINE TO SIXTY CENTS IN NEW 

YORK. 

It was now near the first of May and I did not 
know the prices birds were bringing, or we should 
have continued at work, but we left that immediate 
country and with a partner went down to Henry on 
the Illinois River, where I had before been. We 
walked out from the town in the early morning down 
the river one mile, and then out into the bottoms 
south of the Big Lake. We found a great many 
birds but they were mostly among the flags where 
with water and mud the walking was very heavy. 
Then we went to drier land that skirted around the 
edge of the farm on our right-hand side ; we found 



NELSON JOLES. 63 

Our load rather heavy, so, selecting a good place, 
we deposited our birds, each by himself, on a little 
rise of ground, probably twenty-five or thirty rods 
from the field, where a man was ploughing, covered 
them over nicely with grass and proceeded on till it 
was time to turn back. On coming to the place of 
our deposit, my partner found his birds were all 
gone while mine were left, the only instance I ever 
knew of birds being captured when so planted. In 
two or three days we got a nice box or two. We 
returned to Geneseo where we first found the prices 
our birds were bringing. Messrs. Robbins sent us 
two dollars a dozen for them all to> the end of the 
season, and we regained the loss which we sustained 
in former sales through commission men. 

About this time, while we were coursing along the 
lower end of the Big Slough, and near the end of 
the season for snipe, we saw a tall man approaching 
from the northeast, making his way down the center 
of the marsh and shooting as he approached. As 
he came near he informed me who he was, where he 
lived, up the Slough two or three miles, and that 
he and his boys were good shots and, whenever they 
could, made their living by hunting, and suggested 
that I buy his birds. I had seen him in the edge of 
the winter the year before, had been in his house for 
a few minutes, but was not personally acquainted 
with him. I agreed to do as he asked, and that 
man's name was Nelson Joles, who, if he did not 
kill so many birds himself, was instrumental in 
bringing me more game than any party in Henry 
County. One of his sons had married the daughter 
of George Beers, and they were all capital fellows, 
and for fifteen or twenty years continued to bring in 
more birds than I received from any other partv. 
Mr. Joles at that time was past the prime of life 



64 



NELSON JOLES. 



but straight as an arrow, and his family, whom I had 
the pleasure of visiting very many times afterward, 
was of a very sociable disposition. The boys were 
all desperately fond of hunting as soon as they could 




Man of Six Feet. 

carry a gun, and they made the country ring for 
miles around, so much so, they soon forgot their 
little farm when birds could be had and prosecuted 
this new branch of industry with ardor and success. 
Of Mrs. Joles it may be said, she was a pattern 
housekeeper, if anything too free for herself, but 
she assisted very much in the game business. The 



THE "GAMEY" WOMAN. 65 

family were living in a region full of game birds, all 
kinds that roamed the prairies passed over their 
fields, which made up a small farm adjoining 
wooded lands on the east and west, from which a 




The "Gamey" Woman. 

road ran off southeasterly toward Green River 
bridee and on to Atkinson, and on the southwest the 
main road passed to Geneseo. I think Mrs. Joles 
must have forgotten her meals if not her sleep some- 
times, because many were the flocks of geese and 
ducks and chickens that came from the prairie be- 
low, and making for the Big Slough were stopped 



66 QUAIL IN KNOX CO, 1856-60. 

by the guns of her boys whom she duly informed 
when they were about to approach. I have slept 
many times in the chamber of her house when she 
was up by daylight, giving an account of what she 
had seen outside while she was preparing her meals. 
The quantities of ducks she picked and dressed were 
beyond all computation, so much so she had saved 
whole covers of down with which she graced and 
warmed our beds, and which will never be forgotten. 
Some years later she and her husband, the tall 
cypress of the swamps and the stalwart among men, 
moved to Kansas, and, returning later, Mr. Joles 
died at Geneseo in 1886, and Mrs. Joles, now eighty- 
seven years old, is ending her days in the same 
city, living with her son Henry. Many warriors had 
lived before Agamemnon, many women have shown 
the grace and sweetness that filled all their lives 
while they had happy surroundings and every com- 
fort was assured, but she of her limited resources 
made health and cheer to spring up all around her 
and so consecrated her home. I never saw Mr. 
Joles after his return from the West. He was much 
troubled with asthma, but his humor was always 
abundant and charitable. His mind was unclouded 
and like a stream at his time of life when the fever 
is spent and the passions are chilled, escaping from 
the tumult of the hills and reaching the plain, with 
only ripples on its surface, goes willingly on to the 
ocean. When God made man I think he intended 
him to be about six feet tall, and this is what Nelson 
Joles was. In the latter part of the 70's I had an 
order for live prairie chickens and they were very 
hard to get. However, I counseled with the Joles' 
and they said if a good snow came on their buck- 
wheat patch, the birds would surely come and they 
would get them. They got their traps ready, and 



SELLS LIVE PRAIRIE CHiCKENS. 67 

sure enough the snow came and the birds. This was 
in March. I agreed with them for four dollars a 
dozen. Dead birds were worth about three dollars. 
I did not know what live birds would bring nor how 
many I could sell if I had them, but they usually 
brought about two dollars per pair. Neither myself 
nor the buyer expected very many, and as it was 
getting late and the prospect less every day, the 
buyer told my commission man to write to me and 
tell me that he would rather give three dollars a 
pair than to fail in getting them, not stipulating any 
exact number. I had hardly read this letter and 
another following immediately in which the seller 
said, "I hear you have a good snow out West and 
shall expect the birds," when lo, in the forenoon in 
came a wagon load of live birds to Kewanee. I think 
there was about twelve dozen and the boys said 
dozens of them got away out of the shanty they had 
to hold them. I put them into low coops so they 
would not mar or bruise each other and got them 
off by express next day. The expressman was not 
used to live birds at that time and he sent them 
through as dead weight. When the buyer saw them, 
he declined to pay over $2.75 per pair, as there were 
so many more than he had expected, and they were 
sold at that price. I sent several lots from other 
parties afterward and was not able to get over two 
dollars per pair, and it was very difficult to get 
them through alive. Mr. Joles was not able to do 
very much with game after this, as his boys grew 
up and shifted for themselves, but the trade in the 
West was opening up briskly and I commenced to 
get most of my supplies from there. One day as 
I was about leaving his place, Mr. Joles said to me : 
"What will you take for your buggy and give me 
time to pay for it, and accept a note well secured 



68 SELLS NELSON JOLES A WAGON. 

therefor?" I replied at once, "I paid one hundred 
dollars for this. It has not been used very long. I 
could sell it to you for that money." He said, "I 
will accept the offer, will give you the note ; my boys 
will sign it and we will put in the little balance that 
is now coming to you." The first time after this 
that I saw Mr. Joles, I exchanged the wagon for the 
note. I was surprised to find it read for twenty- 
five dollars more than he owed me, and I said, "You 
do not owe me that amount." "Well," he replied, 
"I wanted to borrow twenty-five dollars and that 
was included." I told him I was not loaning money, 
but I did not want to give up the note, and so I let 
it go until I could see the other signers. We ran 
across one another several times afterwards and I 
was asked each time for the twenty-five dollars. At 
last I said to Mr. Joles, "I have endorsed twenty- 
five dollars on the note so it is now all right." When 
it became due Henry Joles, his son, paid me. 

The winter of 1859 and '6o I passed in Knox 
County hunting for quail. I found them exceeding- 
ly plenty and in the first thirty days I was there I 
averaged fifty-five birds per day. I stopped with 
Mr. Norton, of the Wataga House, and drove out 
each day five or six miles south and southeast till I 
came into the coal lands. The country was very 
rough and broken, small streams ran here and there 
and gathering together in a larger channel made 
their way south and southwest. Little farms here 
and there dotted the hill sides with many vacant 
acres between. The farmers are mostly Swedes, 
very few of their farms being over forty acres. The 
highways did not show much signs of travel, in a 
little rough weather and storms you could scarcely 
make your way from house to house. The little 
pinched corn fields scarcely showed five acres in a 



NORTH OF ONEIDA. 69 

patch, and the corn being" mostly picked it was no 
great worry to find the birds. By the close of the 
winter I had nearly gathered up the emails that were 
in that settlement, and in March, with a couple of 
hunters, we moved north to the prairie country, 
about a mile north of Oneida. We stopped with a 
family where there were three persons, father, 
mother and daughter, the latter about sixteen years 
old. I remember this, for the daughter did the 
milking and chores about the house, inside and out, 
and at every proper occasion she sang "Sweet hour 
of prayer, sweet hour of prayer," which at that time 
was quite new to me and sounded both sweet and 
dear. At that time the fastidious criticisms of the 
last verse had not appeared and the passage of 
"Passing through the air" seemed well enough, but 
in later times it has been killed by seeming to use 
the language of the Spiritualists, who are so cogni- 
zant of that mode of traveling that it has become 
a menace to good sense and some kind of excision 
seems to be necessary. We offer a substitute : 

SWEET HOUR OF PRAYER. 
"And shout and sing as home we fare, 
Farewell, farewell, sweet hour of prayer." 

The last day of March, i860, I left this family, 
and the following afternoon, April 1st, again ap- 
peared on the Big Slough. This time I left the Vil- 
lage of Geneseo and went north and east, farther up 
where the hunters lived. There was a man by the 
name of Crittenden whom I found in Knox County 
who wanted to join us in the Spring, and he was 
there with a horse and buggy when I came. We 
had three or four Joles' boys, Billy Morris, some- 
times Beers and his son and son-in T law took a hand 
for a day or two, beside myself. Before I bought 



70 NO SALE FOR SNIPE IN i860. 

very many, I shipped a small box to see how prices 
would open up in New York, and it was only $1.50 
per dozen. Taking the expense out the prospect was 
not flattering or auspicious. I should not at this 
time have made any contracts, and if I did, only for 
short periods, but the hunters were very pressing for 
a price, and taking the last year for a cue I rather 
believed that if prices were low for a while they 
would recover, so that Robbins would take them at 
a price that would make me some profit. I named 
seventy-five cents per dozen, and while I did not 
make an agreement for the future, I continued to 
take them and figure them at that price whether I 
paid for them or not, and therefore, legally, there 
was no escape. The next box sola for ten cents, the 
third for eight, the fourth for six cents each, and I 
stopped shipping and put the birds away in an ice 
house, laying their breasts flat on the ice and cover- 
ing them up where nothing would hurt them. After 
keeping them a week, the reports came in so bad 
that I did not feel to risk them any longer. I packed 
them all up and sent them to Messrs. Robbins, from 
whom I heard nothing for a number of days. There 
was over a thousand snipe and considerable plover 
in the lot. At last I received answer with a check 
for a little over thirty dollars, with the information 
added that that amount paid for all he had sold, and 
the balance had been thrown away. 

While I w"as at Colona a local hunter informed 
me there was a large kind of snipe which the farmers 
called bull snipe which were quite plenty above and 
below the Rock River bridge. I concluded they must 
be woodcock, and I figured that I might recoup my- 
self with them in August following. I had long 
meditated a visit to my brother in Minnesota, and 
I thought this was my opportunity. I had lost in 



CYCLONE OF i860. VISIT TO MINNESOTA. 71 

this transaction with Spring birds something over 
one hundred dollars, which would have been much 
greater had not some unforeseen luck fell in my 
way. After the prices went down to almost nothing 
there were a good many blue-winged teal on the 
same ground as w'e hunted snipe. As far as I could 
I drew the boys away from the snipe shooting to 
hunting them, and in the last week or so we had very 
good success. I sent the birds to Chicago and they 
sold by the dozen for $2.25 to $2.50, and as we 
bought them for a dollar they made us a good mar- 
gin. 

In the afternoon before I left for Minnesota oc- 
curred the great cyclone which destroyed many 
buildings in Henry County and largely wiped out 
the towns of Albany and Canianche on the Missis- 
sippi. I was standing at a window on the west side 
of the Howard House, now the Geneseo* House, 
when a sudden gust of wind tore out the shutters, 
ripping the slats as though they had been paper, 
but otherwise doing the house no damage. It threw 
down the steeple of the church north of the track. 
It was about the first of June. When I got to Colona 
the bridge was gone, for the most part. We made 
connection with the west shore by use of boat and 
passengers and goods were reloaded on the farther 
side. One of my hunters met me at Moline and de- 
sired a settlement with me. I told him it was im- 
possible at that time as all the birds had been lost, 
but encouraged him by saying, as I had no business 
in the summer, I was going for a visit and to cut 
down expenses, but would be in Geneseo again in 
the Fall. I paid eight dollars for my fare and board 
to St. Paul and had a good visit and caught many 
large fish in Lake St. Croix. When I went up, al- 
most the whole length of the river was traversed 



72 VISIT TO MINNESOTA. 

by flocks of wild pigeons. Most of them flew along 
the bank parallel to the shore, and at the place where 
I got off I stopped a few minutes and in that time 
killed all the birds I could carry. I took them to St. 
Paul but could only get three or four cents each for 
them, and I had serious notion of shipping them to 
New York, but the express being six dollars per 
hundred I gave that up as they would bring only 
a dollar a dozen there. In the last week in July I 
returned, got off the boat at Cordova, walked across 
the country to Rock River, crossed that on the ferry 
and the next day started to my home, two and a half 
miles southeast of Kewanee. I had two dollars re- 
maining and was within a mile of home on Sunday, 
when, as I crossed the highway, taking the fields, I 
had the fortune to meet John Whiffen and he was 
delighted to see me. He had a small meat bill, he 
said, against me. He said it was about two dollars. 
I took that sum out, gave it to him and passed on 
my way. Of course, I reached home witliout a dol- 
lar or a cent. However, I managed to return to 
Geneseo, where, on the first day of August, I began 
at woodcock on Green River. I hunted through 
that month, walking out and back to the river, and 
bought very few birds. On the first day of Septem- 
ber I had one hundred dollars to mv credit, without 
losing a bird or selling a pair less than seventy-five 
cents, and I easily killed twenty to twenty-five birds 
per day. The walking was hard and, in addition, I 
did all the packing. I settled up all my debts, with 
experience that was worth a decade of hard labor. 
These were the first woodcock ever shipped out of 
Henry County, and probably out of the state. 

From 1 86 1, for two years following, jack snipe 
sold low, seldom over $1.00 to $1.50, until late in 
the season, when the hunting was about over; then 



JOHN A. LYON AND A. & E. ROBBINS. 73 

they would spring up to $2.00 and sometimes $2.50. 
Here was a point to be gained. Could I keep those 
birds long enough on ice to secure the larger price? 
That I endeavored to do. I had practiced long 
enough keeping birds in that manner to know how 
long it would be safe to do so and have them mar- 
ketable. I shipped everything up to April 20th, 
when snipe began to be fat, and packed away what 
came in afterward till close to the 10th of May. 
The poor birds which came early would not keep 
so well as those which were fatter and came later, 
and as soon as receipts fell off in New York, prices 
would begin to rise, and from about the first of May 
till the last were sold out, our kept birds sold for the 
best of the season. By limiting the shipments after 
the 20th of the month, the marketmen would get 
very hungry for them. They could not get any only 
at advanced prices from my commission man, when 
they would commence correspondence with me. 

In 1863 I did not buy many birds till prices were 
low and the amount was so large and the hunters de- 
manded ten cents a piece for them, that I dropped 
out largely from buying on that account. I had an 
unfortunate circumstance occur which threw me out 
of a large commission. The ice box which I used 
stood on the porch. This box had once been a re- 
ceptacle for beer kegs and in the place where the 
spout came out the flies went in, and so damaged 
the shipment that a hundred dozen sold for half 
price. At this time I was dealing with John A. 
Lyon, and he soon became expert in the trade and 
knew when to order and what they would have to 
pay. He did not deluge me with advice, as many 
dealers did, but he would, on the first inquiry, find 
my price and act accordingly. The two years that 
followed I sent most of my birds to him, because, 



74 JOHN A. LYON AND A. E. ROBBINS. 

while Messrs. Robbins would give me a little better 
price early in the season, they would not give me 
any advance corresponding with the market later. 
Still, I occasionally sent a shipment or two to them 
to keep in touch with their prices. 

The market tone was now broadening and 
brighter, speculators began to come into the field. 
We reached the point where we would not sell any 
birds below $2.25, while the early birds would only 
bring $1.50. We constantly kept from two to five 
barrels on the ice, of selected birds, as soon as they 
came in after the 20th, and if ^orders did not come to 
me direct, in the first week of May we shipped them 
all to Mr. Lyon and he sold them all at $2.25 to 
$2.50 per dozen. We did this the more willingly 
because on another occasion we had five barrels 
. ahead and we had an outside order for them that 
they could probably get from $1.75 to $2.00 per 
dozen, subject to sale, and as these were composed 
largely of early birds we sent them on. The com- 
mission firm telegraphed on arrival that they had 
sold one barrel at $1.75 and were holding the re- 
mainder. In a day or two they wrote me that they 
had sold the balance at $1.00, as they had no means 
of keeping them and they would soon spoil. Then I 
abandoned shipping anything in large quantities 
unless the price was agreed upon beforehand. 

SNIPE AND PLOVER ADVANCE. ATKINSON. 

In 1864 I opened up the Spring trade at Atkin- 
son and put up a building there to pack goods. 

They had to be double-boxed and ice-packed. 
The former were more desirable, but there was 
more risk. I remember one week's receipts of sales 
of Atkinson shipments which amounted to over five 



EDWARD SUMNER. 75 

hundred dollars. In 1864 trade had improved so 
much there appeared other dealers in New York 
who were soliciting shipments, and among the rest 
the members of the firm of Trimm & Sumner, on 
Washington Market, of whom Edward Sumner was 
the active manager of the game department. He 
was an inveterate writer and a great penman and he 
started by writing up the game business from day 
to day and endeavoring to secure our birds. Be- 
tween the two New' York markets, Washington and 
Fulton Street, there sprang up a great rivalry, and 
it would be a modest statement to say that between 
the two we got better returns than ever before. 
Sumner was every way as prompt as A. & E. Rob- 
bins and the information he threw in gratis was very 
gratifying. Everything now pointed to- an early 
close of the war. Money in the great centers was 
abundant and rapidly distributed by government. 
When Sumner first addressed me at Atkinson he 
quoted prices for jacks at $2.25 per dozen without 
commission. Messrs. Robbins were paying me 
eighteen cents each. I immediately shipped Sumner 
something over eight hundred snipe and received 
promptly in return one hundred and forty-four dol- 
lars. Following that I shipped him a box nearly 
every day, and as it was getting late in the month 
and receipts began to slacken he increased his price 
to twenty cents and eventually to twenty-five, and 
the last shipment of fifty-nine dozen that Spring to 
four dollars, including golden plover, grass plover 
and large yellowlegs. That was the high water 
mark and I had no birds- to hold. Between 1864 
and 1870 trade was unusually good, but we never 
reached that price for snipe and plover again within 
that time. One spring the birds were very late in 
coming and up to the 20th of April we had only col- 



76 OVERLOADED MARKETS SELL SNIPE DOWN. 

lected a few hundred as it was very cold and back- 
ward. About that time they began to arrive freely, 
when a sudden fall of snow came on and with the 
increased cold shut them off altogether, and that 
year prices were firm at three dollars and three- 
fifty when the season closed. One year we shipped 
twelve thousand golden plover and eight thousand 
snipe and marketed all of them safely, with the result 
that prices fell from opening to close, and the last 
sold at seventy-five cents in New York. I distinct- 
ly remember this last, as I shot the birds myself on 
the Pritchard land on the flat bottoms near to Green 
River and east of One Hundred Acre Grove, and it 
was on the 15th day of May, something I had never 
known to be done before or since at that day. I 
also shipped Lanning & Laing the following year all 
of my birds. They were a commission firm which 
sold all but the second shipment and the last at 
two dollars per dozen. The last lots which I held 
a few days on ice sold for $2.75, and the second 
shipment at $1.50. In the following year we held 
back our birds, after April 20th, when they were fat, 
and brought them to Kewanee to ship, and by so 
doing we exposed them too much to the air and 
without ice packing ; we suffered a total loss of two 
hundred dozen birds. They would have brought 
two* dollars a dozen if properly packed. By this 
time the golden plover began to decrease in numbers 
and spring receipts being so much lighter, they in- 
creased in price until they brought the same as snipe. 
This was in the days when breech loaders began to 
appear. They were very high in price but poor in 
quality ; most of them were of the pin fire kind, and 
the locking was not able to bear up the strain very 
long, which was dangerous, while the smoke escaped 
from around a pin, which fired the load and gave 



LOTS OF GOLDEN PLOVER. 77 

the gun the name pin fire. Late in April, the birds 
which now had become spotted-breasted, would 
hover and light in great flocks in shallow ponds 
where they could wade leg deep and flutter their 
wings and wash themselves. I detected one morn- 
ing a flock of these birds sailing around and whist- 
ling over a low pond, as they do preparatory to 
alighting, and in a few minutes they did alight. They 
were very wary when in flocks, so I drove my horse 
quartering as if to go by them, got out my cartridges, 
and, when within proper distance, I dropped off be- 
hind the wagon with cartridges on the seat, stopped 
the horse, stooped down as low as I could to get a 
raking fire, and let go one barrel as they were and 
one as they raised. Those that fell back wounded 
uttered a terrific cry, lifted their wings and fluttered, 
which brought the flock back, when I unloaded two 
barrels again. They whirled away and returned 
until I had fired twelve or fourteen times, when they 
left entirely, and the birds counted out sixty-seven 
before one was picked up. In that forenoon I filled 
a two-bushel bag and was back before dinner. On 
the farm a little west of Atkinson I killed forty of 
them at one discharge of the two barrels and I think 
at least a dozen ran away. I used to tell the owner 
of the field that the birds that crossed his farm in 
one day were worth more than his whole farm, 
which was literally true. With a breech loader such 
as we have now a man with a team could have shot 
easily two hundreds birds a day. 

After '63 the game business was getting brisk and 
purchases were so large, so often and so continuous, 
we were often pressed for money to meet them, 
where we depended for sales of goods that went a 
thousand miles away to market. In not a few in- 
stances we abandoned the purchase of a large amount 



78 HIGH PRICES OF GAME AND CEREALS IN '65 

of game solely for want of ready cash, which pre- 
sented to us a very large margin of profit. At that 
time J. L. Piatt was running the only bank in 
Kewanee, where now is Zang's butcher shop. I did 
considerable business with him, but I said to him 
one day that I was too far away from my place of 
sales to do the business which was legally mine. He 
asked me what I meant. I said I meant cash, and 
rather than borrow it or ask for accommodation I 
would let sales go by. He said, "Why don't you 
draw?" I replied I did not know what that meant. 
He says, "I will tell you. Make your shipments, 
large or small, and then make a draft against it 
for about two-thirds of what the goods are actually 
worth, and I will advance the money for you to use, 
charging you only brokerage of twenty cents on a 
hundred dollars." I took his advice and gladly, and 
from that time afterward I had no trouble to pay 
for all the salable goods I chose to handle. This 
was the time I was opening up trade with Trimm 
and Sumner, and I think there never was a draft 
refused, although once or twice the consignee had 
hard work to pay them promptly, the goods not hav- 
ing yet arrived. At this time I bought everything 
that came to hand, game, furs and poultry, some- 
times hides, and the struggle on the street for poul- 
try at that time would make a record for anybody. 
Best of all, my consignees were well pleased, and no 
upbraiding letters came from them to mar our good 
fortune. 

In 1865, With the close of the Civil War, the 
cereals reached high figures and outran proportion- 
ately the price of game. Corn advanced to one dol- 
lar per bushel and oats to forty cents and upwards. 
Lead soared and shot brought $5.55 per sack. The 
price of land was drawn upwards with the crops. 



THE COUNTRY SMILES. 79 

During the Yvar many pieces of land had been al- 
lowed to run fallow, weeds choked the highways 
and low grounds, once cultivated, went back to 
coarse grasses and neglect. The highways forgot to 
follow section lines, a short cut to the towns pre- 
vailed. The sloughs that emptied into the river 
beds seemed to be obstructed and heavy rains forced 
the floods back into fertile fields. Fences had gone 
to decay and the osage hedge to neglect and business 
was cramped and constrained because of the war. 
Now this was all changed. Farmers began to throw 
up new fences and improve the old ones. Discharged 
soldiers came in and made new laborers to culti- 
vate the fields. Houses guiltless of paint were re- 
freshened and decked anew. Lands that were sod- 
den and cold were turned up to the sun and their 
faces became joyous with the harvest. Most all 
the waterways were shut into healthy limits, new 
bridges spanned the quagmire, new roads followed 
section lines. Hills were cut down and hollows 
filled up. Drainage was begun. The axe struck 
into the forest. On the lowlands cattle seemed to 
multiply ; they tramped down and destroyed the 
thrifty shoots, the long grass and the immature 
bushes which promised thrifty trees and furnished 
the only cover for game. The Green and .Rock 
River country began to be depleted of woodcock 
and quail. The waters sank low in the marshes. 
Ducks were fewer and their stay less prolonged. St. 
Peters was a land of sullen, slimy channels where 
the muskrat drove his canal through flags and bunch 
grass, from pool to pool, tearing up roots and shoots 
and setting up his throne on top of gathered heaps 
and bogs which obstructed his way. The whole 
country north of the C. & R. I. Railroad seemed to 
rise in benediction for the blessing of the sun and 



80 PACKING WOODCOCKS. 

the rain. From the middle of June until after July 
4th, we gathered what woodcocks were to be had on 
our home streams and then followed the Mississippi 
until September. 

The history of woodcock shooting is to me the 
most interesting of all the hunting I have to relate. 
It began with us in the West, as stated, in i860. I 
ceased following the river in 1873. At that time 
we had an experience that stood us in good stead 
for packing and marketing all kinds of game, and 
although we could not hold and cool off on ice 
in hot summer weather, as with the snipe in the 
spring, and then ship without ice, still the bulk was 
so small that the task was not onerous. We doubled 
our boxes always, and that was a great protection 
against the ice melting on the inside. Our custom- 
ers were not then critical about fine plumage. Most 
of our birds arrived wet when sent to market and 
the customers did not complain, if they were sound. 
In some cases Messrs. Robbins informed us that 
the birds arrived very tender ; that they picked them 
out of the sawdust and threw them into ice water, 
by which means they were so restored as to be about 
as good as ever. Later years we had hundreds of 
them arrive that would have been absolutely worth- 
less if they had not been immediately doused in ice 
water. When taking them out and adding a thor- 
ough fanning, loosening up and shaking the feathers 
and drying them again, they regained their original 
appearance so they could hardly be distinguished 
from those that were fresh killed. 

In 1861 W. K. Porter and myself started out to 
kill woodcock. We read of some reports in the 
New York Tribune that experiments in Indiana of 
shipping them to New York had turned out disas- 
trously. Nevertheless, with the experience of i860 



PACKING WOODCOCKS. 81 

with spring birds, we decided to follow it through 
the summer. We started in north of Geneseo and 
followed Green River down, and we were much sur- 
prised in finding birds so plenty. We continued 
for several weeks on that river, and the shooting 
was fine. 

At Rock River bridge we tarried a week or more, 
and when once we had cleaned out a patch pretty 
closely we moved away a few days, and then, like 
young Oliver, we came back for more. The second 
and third time we covered the ground with equally 
good or better results. Then we followed up Rock 
River and by August ist we had reached as far as 
Erie. Ice was hard to get. Added to this was the 
fact that facilities for immediate shipping- were not 
to be had there. W r e had to carry our birds to 
Morrison, and when we boxed and transferred 
them across the country they were liable to' have 
the ice melt out of them, and before they reached 
New York would be spoiled. We lost one small 
box that way at Erie. We packed in double boxes, 
lined with sawdust, and that was often very hard 
to get. At shipping points it could always be 
had, because the trains at that time used wood 
fires, and wood was corded up and sawed at the 
stations, as was the case at Colona, Geneseo and 
Kewanee. The sawdust was mostly oak, and the 
ice water dripping through it made the birds look 
of a dirty red color, but customers did not com- 
plain. The three things, shoe boxes, sawdust and 
the birds, made a nice shipment. 

At length Porter thought the business was un- 
profitable, and dropped out. He had a crippled 
hand, like myself, or rather he had no hand on his 
left arm, and in shooting he shot to the left while 
I shot to the right, which made us very suitable 



82 ROCK RIVER BRIDGE AT COLONA. 

companions. He was a straight, square man, and 
our business dealings together were altogether 
pleasant. I often thought of him afterward when 
prices advanced and birds were plenty, how much 
he was losing by the change. As long as he re- 
mained in Annawan he was active at his trade and 
made a good living, but he did not very much pros- 
per. I bought some birds of him afterwards, but 
he took no active interest in the business, and later 
he moved to Nebraska, since which time I have lost 
track of him. 

The dark cloud continued to loom disastrously 
over us for another year, and then the end began 
to dawn. We found only some sporting men that 
came in for a day or two at Rock River Bridge 
at Colona. On this trip we killed over one thou- 
sand birds and delivered nearly all of them safely 
in New York, but the prices were only thirty cents 
per pair at the highest. More sold at twenty- 
five and some at twenty. I remember the Fourth 
of July that my partner left for a home visit and 
I hunted alone. That day I killed three dozen 
birds, only getting twenty cents per pair for them. 
At the place where I killed these birds on the side 
of a slough, covered with bushes on one side, half 
a mile above Colona on the Green River, I saw 
the first young jack snipe that I ever saw, and 
they were so young they could barely fly and the 
fine hairs stuck out on their heads just like young 
woodcock, which we called wooly heads. After 
Porter returned we took a trip up the Mississippi 
and hunted at Savannah for ten days. These were 
the first birds ever taken there to be shipped and 
they were not plenty. Very few people knew that 
such a bird was there. There was no railroad there 
at that time and we had to take them to Fulton to 



HABITAT OF THE WOODCOCK. 83 

ship. The habits of the birds of Savannah were 
different from any I had before seen and they were 
the same the year following. The birds were to be 
found in the white alders wherever there were any. 
The bodies of the trees grew close together, from 
eight to ten feet in height over your head, and fre- 
quently there were three or four birds in a clump 
at one time. The shade was thicker under these 
trees and covered the ground entirely where the 
birds sat. We found very few birds under the 
open trees and it was past the season for them to 
feed on the sloughs, except sometimes after a rain 
they could be found there. In later years we found 
them in August and September, largely in short 
clumps of bushes resembling alders in appearance, 
and the cover was much thicker than under the al- 
ders, and here the shooting was perfect as long as 
I knew it. I became so familiar with certain 
grounds of this kind that I had them marked in 
my mind, and I never failed to find birds there at 
any time until snow flew. In 1861 I became ac- 
quainted with some hunters by the name of Barton. 
There were three of them and their father, also, 
with whom I had only one transaction that I can 
remember, as he was a fisher and trapper, but he 
was gathering fur along the Edwards River, and 
as I passed his house every few days he invited me 
to buy his furs, which I consented to do, although 
I was not expert in that line. This was, I think, 
in 1863. He wanted twenty-five cents each for his 
muskrats. The rest I do not know what they were 
or what I paid him, but he loaded down my wagon 
with them at that price. I did not know a kit from 
an old rat and I paid him the same price for all. I 
shipped them as the price was fast rising, and they 
sold in New York for 47^4 cents each, except the 



84 A BARGAIN IN FURS.— WM. BARTON. 

kits, which did not bring over one quarter that 
sum. I also bought a few mink from my hunt- 
ers, and Jerry Hopkins at that time was keeping 
grocery store in the old corner of Second and Main 
streets, KeWanee, and as he offered to buy what I 
had every week and give me four dollars apiece for 
all prime mink (which cost me three dollars) which 
I would bring him, I accepted his offer. One day 
I brought in a mink skin which he declared was a 
fox mink and not worth much more thai*; a cotton 
tail, and he would not buy it. As I shipped birds 
every Monday morning, I put that fox mink in with 
the birds, and on getting my returns I found it 
brought six dollars. I think Jerry will never for- 
get that circumstance and he solemnly declared that 
that sale must have been a mistake, as that skin 
could never have brought that price. 

In the summer of 1862 William Barton, one of 
the brothers above mentioned, wanted to hunt with 
me and sell me his birds. As I had a horse and 
buggy I went with him to New Boston and we 
remained there four weeks. The birds were badly 
scattered and we only killed six hundred in that 
time, one hundred of which I killed in three days 
at the mouth of the Edwards, while Barton took 
a visit home. The prices were very low — twenty- 
five to thirty cents per pair in New York — but ev- 
erything else was low — board and ammunition and 
horse feed — but we got home whole. After a little 
while I pushed on to Rock River alone in the month 
of September, and there I killed one hundred pairs 
a week, and there was the first money I had made 
in woodcock since I left Geneseo. I killed thirty 
dozen in that time in about ten days and they 
brought me forty cents a pair in New York, and the 
labor was light and pleasant. 



A BARGAIN IN FURS.— WM. BARTON. 85 

In 1863 I took the same Barton boys and one or 
two others in June and hunted in the neighborhood 
of Rock Island Bridge west of Colona, and there 
We killed three or four boxes in less than a week, 
and these all brought us fifty cents a pair. Then 
we followed up the river again to Erie, and there 
in less than a week we killed four hundred pair, 
which brought us as much or more than the Colona 
birds. I never went back there with anybody to 
hunt with me, but I made that point once every 
Tune for a number of years until the birds became 
too thin to pay me and local hunters began to come 
in as the railroad now passed that point. I don't 
think I ever went there in June but what I killed 
at least one day fifty birds north of the Ferry. The 
last time I found a good many birds south of the 
Ferry. The brush was thick and after pounding 
away to little purpose one afternoon, I concluded to 
quit and give them another trial next day, which I 
did, and then I cleaned out the whole gang. Be- 
fore twelve o'clock I had bagged forty birds, and 
I know I killed birds without looking over the gun 
at all. Once the gun was discharged while I w^as 
holding it in my hand before I got it to my eye, and 
breaking into the trick brush, lo, I found the bird 
lying dead. This hunt is memorable because in 
the midst of the brush I stumbled over a famous 
steel trap, powerful enough to hold a tiger, with 
double springs, which I still possess. From Erie 
we went to Savannah and spent a large part of 
the summer hunting on the Island across the river 
and on the bottoms below the town, and in August, 
when we left, we thought we had killed about all 
the birds that were there. The Bartons were not 
successful in finding woodcock although the birds 
were plenty. They strolled constantly all over the 



86 A BARGAIN IN FURS.— WM. BARTON. 

island looking for sloughs to locate the birds upon 
when they had left that ground in June, and now 
were to be found on the high ridges under big 
trees and in thick, heavy clumps, and everywhere 
where the deep shade protected them. I had no 
difficulty in bagging twenty to twenty-five birds 
a day and never went half a mile from where I 
started, while they wandered aimlessly, went all 
around where the birds were without discovery, 
wasting their time where they were not, tired out at 
night with only two or three birds apiece and dis- 
couraged. I think prices had now reached 65 cents 
per pair. The railroad had come in and we did 
not have to transport them to Fulton. Ice was 
plenty and express moderate and most of the birds 
I shipped to John A. Lyon, New York, the third 
man of the trio, of whom I will speak hereafter. 
I let the Bartons go and took on A. Collins, who 
I employed on various occasions afterwards and of 
whom I shall speak more later. We had but one 
dog, and, like the lion with one pup, it was a good 
one, and contrary to expectation we found more 
birds than we did in July and August. We hunted 
twenty days on the island opposite Savannah and 
mainland beyond the cut-off, which rising at the 
upper end of the island, follows it the whole length 
and empties in the River at Sabula. We planted 
our birds in the damp soil along the river bank, a 
dozen or more at a time as we got them, covered 
them up with moist, soft ground underlaid with 
leaves, and at night gathered them together when 
they were well cooled off and ready to go into the 
ice house. We hunted here twenty days and we 
killed forty birds a day and marketed them in good 
order. I think some of them sold for seventy-five 
cents. Collins carried an army canteen slung over 



A. COLLINS ATSAVANNA. 87 

his shoulder, from which we drew long drafts each 
of us, as the days were hot and the water seemed 
as refreshing as that from the old oaken bucket 
which hung in the well. We walked slowly, the 
dog leading the way, and I do not think ten minutes 
elapsed in which he did not set a bird, the whole 
day long, but the cover sometimes was very close 
and many birds we had to raise three or four times 
to get sight of, and when we did our shots rang out 
together when one load would have been amply 
sufficient. Doubtless either of us would have killed 
twenty-five birds daily if we had had separate dogs. 
In 1864 I was hunting on this same island oppo- 
site Savannah in July. It was a muggy, moist day 
and the mosquitoes were very annoying. It was diffi- 
cult to keep your patience with the winged pests and 
it took much time to load and I got along slowly. 
I was on the first bench back from the River. 
A skiff had come up and landed on the shore a 
few rods distant, and I noticed two persons follow 
back into the woods which were rather dark, some- 
what in the direction of me, and though they did 
not come up they seemed to be following me. They 
followed me about for perhaps an hour (in which 
I killed several birds), and left without coming up. 
Later, in Savannah, I was accosted by a man who 
said he lived there, was a fisherman in summer and 
pork packer in winter, was handy with a gun, and 
he was one of the men on the Island who had 
been following me about, wondering what I was 
doing and seeing how I killed birds. He believed 
if I would buy his birds he could kill them as I did, 
and said that his name was Nate Tompkins. I 
agreed with him on the price and he proved to be 
one of the most successful woodcock hunters I 
ever knew. I traveled with him until 1866, going 



88 NATE TOMPKINS. 

with him in his skiff, he doing the rowing, being 
an expert boatman and thoroughly familiar along 
the river bottom in the country. Many times I 
sat with him in the boat as he rowed ten or fif- 
teen miles up the river in a heavy current, always 
dodging the swift water when he could, following 
the sloughs and the shore where the water was less 
rapid. 

HIS IDIOSYNCRASIES. 

He was a most intense listener, about forty- 
five years old. He gathered up and held in reserve 
every word you said, and with his deep, dark eyes 
looking down upon you from those steady lids, he 
was a true representative of the Pennsylvania back- 
woodsman, as he had once been. He was an in- 
veterate smoker and carried a pipe and smoked it as 
he rode, I sitting in the back seat and he pulling 
long stretches of the river channel, coming to a stop 
when he reached his limit, and always where the 
birds were. If he was within reaching distance of 
home the same day he would time his hunt so we 
would set out before sundown, and he absolutely 
declared he would not return home after dark. On 
one occasion I did not reach the boat until dark, 
and he was in a state so excited it was useless to 
try to reason with him. As I had struck a fine 
lot of birds that day and killed three dozen, I im- 
agine that circumstance had something to do with 
it whilst he was waiting, gaining nothing. With 
all the rest, he was a good hater ; he remembered 
distinctly every man who had taken advantage of 
him, even to a cent, and I took good care that he 
did not direct his malice towards me. He seldom 
killed after the first year less than twenty-five birds 
a day, and when he had the latter number he wanted 
to return home if it was only in the middle of the 



DID NOT CARE FOR SOFT DRINKS. 89 

afternoon. He was not a temperate man, but I 
do not remember when he showed effects of drink 
so much as to be offensive or to be incapable of a 
successful hunt, but he was cross-tempered some- 
times and he did not look out for his family as he 
should. Some mornings he would not appear at 
the boat and in that case I would go off on foot on 
some of the islands from Sabula to hunt, and I 
was told afterwards he was drinking. He had no 
settled town or home. In successsive years I knew 
his stopping place for fifty miles and I kept track 
of him the last when he camped one fall near Prairie 
du Chien. He lived until 1899 and died in August 
of that year,. His drinking habits increased with 
his age, which, with resulting poverty, drove his 
wife at last to leave him. When I stopped with 
them, as I did several nights in the course of those 
years, his table was very scanty, but his* wife made 
no complaint. He had a dog with only one eye, and 
as he had great success with him, I bought him for 
twenty-five dollars, hoping good luck would follow 
me, but some neighbors poisoned him in a few days. 
In 1864 Tompkins still lived at Sabula and I 
bought his birds at twenty-five cents each, with the 
agreement that he should take me in his skiff with 
him whenever he went to hunt. By the middle 
of August we had taken sixteen hundred birds. 
The first box brought me 85 cents, and after that 
all of them one dollar per p^\r^ Later it became 
necessary to move, and Tompkins not caring to 
leave town at that time, I went on boat to Du- 
buque and up on to the Islands above there about 
four or five miles on the Wisconsin side, and the 
hunting was fine as he had told me it would be. 
The first week I killed in five days 159 birds and 
the following week I sent for Charles Collins to 



90 TOMPKINS AT SABTJLA, 1864. 

help me, and we did nearly as well for each of us, 
and I remember Sumner, in New York, sold them 
and allowed me $1.12^2 per pair, so the check 
was considerably over one hundred dollars. I had 
occasion to remember this, because I came into Du- 
buque with the birds and the Julien House wanted 
to buy them, but they would only offer me $4 per 
dozen and I was sure I could do better. I knew a 
man by the name of Curtis, who was a shipper of 
coal and produce on the boats that ran down to 
Rock Island, and I thought I could .borrow enough 
of him to buy our provisions with and get back on 
the Islands without waiting for returns. We only 
wanted $5, but he would not help me. Next day 
he shipped and went with this cargo, and at Port 
Byron the boiler of the boat exploded and he was 
killed. I think this was the only time I ever 
failed of 'getting accommodations on the River 
whenever I asked for it. I went up to a pawn shop, 
put up my watch for the $5, and went back to 
hunt. 

One day we were on a rather high bench on the 
mainland and our guns were going off pretty lively. 
We were not over two hundred yards apart, but 
we were so busy we did not run onto each other's 
line. I made desperate poor shooting and the 
ground was good. Finally I said to myself, "I will 
go and see what Collins is doing," and I found 
him swearing fearfully at the birds which got away 
from him. I said, "Charley, let us sit down a little 
while and eat our dinner and give our nerves a rest, 
and we will do better." Tlhis we did, and on re- 
suming our firing we had splendid success. There 
were some fishermen camping at the foot of the first 
islands above Dubuque, from Lancaster, Wisconsin, 
and we begged the privilege of staying with them 



CHARLES COLLINS AND SPECHTS' FERRY. 91 

in their tent at night, for it was beginning to get 
cool in September, and we cooked our meals and 
ate with them. We had a nice bed of fir boughs 
and I think I never slept more easily or thoroughly. 
We had a box of ice, a shoe box in which we laid 
our birds to keep them from the heat and flies of 
the day time. The ice we had hauled from Du- 
buque in a skiff and it was no pleasant or easy task. 
This night as we returned from hunt, we found 
our box open and inside a dressed pig stretched 
warm and fresh the length of the box, to cool on 
our ice and the ice half gone. There was a scene 
when we came together and I never want to repeat 
it. We had to go to town next day for ice and so 
lost the day. The following season I went up early 
and shot around Sabula and later in September 
Charles Collins wanted to go with me again to Du- 
buque. I set a day to leave Kewanee and when 
the time arrived he said he could not go for a few 
hours, "But you go on and I will meet you at 
Rock Island." I went there but he did not come. 
I returned on the first train for I knew his prom- 
ises were empty wind, and his excuses were on tap 
whenever he wanted them. I determined to take 
none this time and give him no chance to form one. 
I came onto him unexpectedly where he was plow- 
ing, with no thought of seeing me, and before he 
had fairly looked up I had him. He could not look 
up ; he broke down and begged pardon. I took 
him with me the next day. We did most of our 
hunting below Cassville, and the last week, which 
was the first week in October, we stopped at Spechts, 
opposite the Canal which comes into the River be- 
low Potosi and connects the slough with the river. 
In these six days we averaged over sixty woodcock 
per day between us, and we shipped them from 



92 WOODCOCKS DISAPPEAR IN SUMMER OF '65. 

East Dubuque to New York as we came down the 
River, the last week of the season. The birds were 
sold at fifty cents per pair to Sumner, who claimed 
they came tool ate and out of season. In 1865 
things were fairly booming-. The first of the season 
we had a fair supply of woodcock and they sold 
well. In August there was no rain and the sloughs 
began to dry up fast, and the birds gradually to 
disappear. They could not be found as usual in 
the heavy timber under the largest trees, where the 
ground was soft and damp and cool. We thought 
we should see them again in September before their 
annual dispersion to the South, out they never came. 
For more than a hundred miles we drove along the 
River and surveyed with great minuteness all the 
places where they were likely to be found. Along 
some sloughs there were some signs that they had 
fed there over night, but we could not raise over 
one or two birds a day. We carried a box of ice 
along with us and in the course of our travel from 
Platte River South below East Dubuque we found 
nothing but partridges and did not hunt them only 
as the dog broke into covies along our route, and 
we stopped and fired a few shots. Twenty part- 
ridges we took that day without leaving the wagon 
road, and we sold them in New York for one dollar 
per pair. In our travels we learned of a hunter 
who watched a pond at dusk and killed a dozen 
woodcock or more every night, but we found no 
such place. It is possible that around Potosi birds 
could have been found, as on a later year we found 
them there when they had disappeared elsewhere. 
It is not quite certain that the dry weather drove 
them off. Once before it had been very dry, the 
River was so low that it had been forded in some 
places, sand banks were everywhere and water shal- 



WOODCOCKS FLY TO THE HIGHEST PEAKS 93 

low. Under the great oaks, in deep and impene- 
trable shade and gloom, behind fallen trunks where 
the sun never shone, and death was disrobing the 
giants of the past, we had often found them flutter- 
ing up where no life seemed to exist, but we searched 
for them now all in vain. We had imagined the 
white grubs which lie hid in these sepulchral homes 
of rotting trunks furnished them food when the 
earth worms did not, but if so they left no trace. 
We sought them along high and dry ridges where 
the birds generally repair when they leave the 
sloughs in July, in clumps of impenetrable bushes 
and under thick running vines and everywhere we 
could invent a place they could sit concealed. The 
eye of the sun must not light upon them. If they 
were inaccessible by day they were equally so when 
the shadows began to fall. The quick, sharp whir 
of their wings would then come if at all. At this 
hour they left their cover for their evening meal, 
lighted on soft, damp ground where the worms 
were, did their lively probing until the ground was 
pierced with holes like a skimmer, or they lifted 
themselves up to the hilltops on easy wings, swing- 
ing as an athlete from point to point, those airy 
domes of rock where the clouds rolled and the lowly 
wanderers were lost in space. I had lost Tompkins 
for a while, and he was indebted to me twentv dol- 

it 

lars or more, and he had promised to make it up to 
me in the previous fall, but it never came. He had 
sent his birds to me the year before and we would 
pack them with what others we had at Dubuque 
and send his returns to him at Sabula. I instructed 
the express agent there to pay him for any ship- 
ments he might make while I was away, and to the 
check which I last sent him, he added an equal 
amount from the agent, so that he got his pay 



94 A RUSE ON TOMPKINS SUCCEEDS. 

twice. I not only lost the money but lost the 
birds, as he did not ship me again afterwards. I 
determined on a ruse. In July before the season 
opened, I went to him in Sabula and told him that 
I wanted his birds the coming summer ; that I made 
no account of what he owed me, we would call that 
account square, he might send me in his game as 
usual and nothing would be held back. It worked 
all right. I could have recouped myself many 
times if I had chosen, but I never did. I got his 
game ever afterwards when I was within reach and 
I have no doubt but what it was a profitable venture. 
We were apprehensive in 1866 whether the birds 
would be found as plenty as in 1864, but when it 
came around the birds were as plenty as ever. We 
took on Tyler Mapes and traveled farther up the 
River and reached Cassville, an old looking Ger- 
man town, and I think the hunt at that place was as 
good and the sport as exciting as any place we ever 
visited. One thing was remarkable. We were 
hunting woodcock and yet we were killing part- 
ridges nearly as plenty; something in the old style 
which we first discovered above Dubuque, was ap- 
parent. When we had a point the dog could not 
tell us what kind of bird it was, which made the 
hunt more exciting. In the thickest bushes among 
willows rising over your head so close set you could 
hardly make your way between them, you some- 
times had to be dog and hunter before you could 
dislodge them. It was a pleasure for us to have a 
change, if only occasionally, and those fine fellows 
with tail feathers just budding out and spotted 
breasts, set off handsomely the ruddy brown wood- 
cock which were our daily hunt. Just below Cass- 
ville is a small island called Jacko, and across the 
River and up from the old town are large bottoms 



CASSVILLE AND DEWEY HOTEL. 95 

where the birds had not been disturbed. We could 
find only one place suitable to board, which was 
the Dewey Hotel, the ex-governor's of Wisconsin, 
which he built to secure the court house and failed, 
and which was now in decay. It was a noble man- 
sion and rented for a boarding house. Both the 
governor and his wife frequently sat at the table 
with us and their little child. More often the wife 
and child came alone, and we got on good terms 
with her right away, but the governor would not 
be comforted and one day he told us he did not want 
us to be killing those birds of his and shipping them 
to the nabobs of New York to feast upon. We in- 
quired and found he owned about all the land 
around there on the river bottoms, but in as much 
as the landlord was getting some revenue out of 
us, which he was supposed largely to share, we 
gave ourselves no uneasiness and continued to trans- 
gress. We expected trouble, but it never came, and 
in time we left in peace. The governor was im- 
proving his lands up along the River with fine 
stone fences for miles adjoining the mountain side, 
and built him a palace costing twenty thousand dol- 
lars. His wife's mother lived below the town on 
the Wisconsin River, and as her daughter and the 
governor did not get along well together, it so wor- 
ried her that she drowned herself in that river. 
Uater after we were gone, I think the next spring, 
the wife went to Europe and drew so heavily on 
him for expenses, which annoyed him ; she finally 
came home and they separated, the wife living in 
poverty near Milwaukee with her mind demented, 
and later moved to Washington, D. C, where she 
remained with her daughter and where she died a 
few years ago. The Governor became a hankrupt 
and his property passed to his creditors, and he died 



96 CHARLES COLLINS' MISFORTUNE?. 

earlier. We may here remark of the two Collinses 
that they were brothers, raised on the farm with 
their father a few miles from Kewanee, and I be- 
came acquainted with them very soon after reach- 
ing Henry county. Charles was the older of the 
two and loved hunting immensely well when he 
could sell his game, and he shot well. He followed 
me often in my hunts to distant towns and states. 
Out in Iowa, in Knox County in this State, and 
along the up-river towns, in 1872, when he became 
a citizen of Nashua, Iowa, where he remained until 
he died a few years later. He was an industrious 
worker in any capacity you placed him, and barring 
his defects, was as good a voyageur as you would 
care to have with you. He was a fairly good talker, 
a good listener, and, if he could not make, at least 
enjoyed happy hits, and was lavish in applauding 
them in others. He was not temperate, he loved a 
glass dearly, but I never saw it have any ill effects 
except to make him quarrelsome. His faults were 
more of the head than the heart, and his head was 
proverbially bad. I do not think his moral nature 
Was shocked or repelled in hearing anything that 
pleased him or that made fun for him. He drew 
this nature from his surroundings, which were un- 
favorable and unhappy, as his father taught him dis- 
respect for all the religious institutions that had for 
their object to make men pure and clean. I do not 
think he ever regarded the future with solicitude, 
and his life and that of his family was one round of 
weakness, wickedness and woe. 

In 1866 an uneasy feeling crept in among the 
hunters of Sabula, that they were not getting full 
value for their birds, and among the rest, Tompkins, 
with whom I hunted early in the season. Taking 
that year as a sample, it was indisputably true that 



THE SABULA HUNTERS SECEDE IN 1866 97 

the birds were worth more than twenty-five cents 
each, which I paid them, but there were many sea- 
sons when they would not net that price, both before 
and after that year. As Tompkins and myself 
killed most of the birds that were shipped, and our 
total birds made us a profit of over a thousand 
dollars that year, we made no effort to control ship- 
ments which originated with Kindred and one or 
two other hunters who formed a compact for hunt- 
ing together and shipping their own birds. Improp- 
er packing and frequent delays in returns and de- 
lays in getting enough birds to secure frequent ship- 
ments, seemed to present the only obstacle to their 
success. They knew our packing well and were 
as capable of doing it as ourselves. They pushed 
Northward by steamboat, taking their skiffs with 
them as far as Lansing, Brownsville and LaCrosse, 
along Root River and the west coast of the Mis- 
sippi generally, and poor shots as they were they did 
remarkably well if their tale was to be believed. 
Kindred was so fascinated with his unexpected good 
fortune,' he began to purchase real estate in Sabula, 
and was the reputed owner of some property. His 
companions gave out that they got $1.25 for their 
birds. Therefore when 1867 came round I made no 
effort to secure their trade and passed Sabula by. 
I took A. Collins, brother of Charles Collins, and 
John Barton, and with a tent left the Savannah 
country and never returned there to hunt. We ex- 
amined the country North of the Galena River 
and as far up as LaCrosse early, and later above 
LaCrosse and in the Trempelau country. We 
found more birds about Potosi bottoms than any- 
where and Barton and I had the satisfaction of 
getting lost in the Kickapoo River bottoms, where 
the mosquitoes nearly annihilated us, and I confi T 



98 LOST IN KICKAPOO BOTTOMS, WIS. 

dently believe would have done so if we had been 
compelled to camp out there all night. We struck 
this bottom a little before noon and were pleased 
with the prospect. Moving about among scatter- 
ing birds, on beautiful ground, and loading rapidly, 
for the pests of mosquitoes hung about us like a 
cloud and got in their work when we stood still, in 
the course of two or three hours we lost our bear- 
ings, as this flat land was so much alike as far as 
we could see, with puddles of water every few rods 
and sometimes a pool which lengthened out and led 
us deeper into the forest as we went. After a while 
it began to dawn on our minds that the sun was 
declining and though we found game slowly and 
constantly as far as we went, we decided we must 
try to get out before nightfall overtook us. I sug- 
gested to Barton that we should follow the sun, as it 
was probable that we had come East from where 
we entered, and this we did. I think we walked 
for three hours as fast as we could walk, never, 
however, failing to fire at a woodcock when we 
surprised one on our way, and as darkness -was set- 
ing in fast we came out of the woods nearly ex- 
hausted, in precisely the same place we entered. As 
we got on the high, open land beyond we heard 
Collins' gun booming about a half a mile away, 
where we soon found him camped and supper ready. 
Collins reached the same low country as we did, 
but he did not dive into the forest. His dog made 
a point in the outskirts but the bird did not rise. 
On walking up there was a stir from among the 
long grass, the bushes bent and switched and a 
bear that had been lying there in cover broke away 
into the timber. This is the only time that we ever 
disturbed bruin in our hunting tours. Deer were of 
common occurrence but we made no effort to kill 



COLLINS DISTURBS A BEAR. 



93 




A. Collins Uncovers a Bear. 



them as they were too much of a burden to carry 
and would have destroyed our day's sport among 
birds. We did not find a good country, about 
Trempelau. We got in among the Indians, who 
visited us nearly every day, now hunting ducks on 
the open ponds or more often sleeping in their 
tepees as leisurely and shiftless as Indians are, kill- 
ing nothing of the game we were hunting. Every- 
where woods and water prevailed. Mosquitoes 
filled the air and in one point of /woods we were 
compelled to abandon it altogether on their ac- 
count. We worked down the River again after 
getting a box or two in this place, and down along 
the West shore as we went late in the afternoon 
we applied at a landing place for provision, and 
were told that one man by the name of Brophy had 
all the stores we wanted, ice included, whither we 

Lot 5. 



100 A VICIOUS RATTLER. 

went, and over his front store door was written in 
large letters, "M. Brophy, Dealer in Whiskey, Beef 
and Beer." We named this Brophytown and stayed 
with him one or two days, when we fell down the 
River again, hunting the Islands as we did so, and 
at night we found ourselves at the foot of a small 
hamlet on the East side, and at the extreme point 
was an unoccupied stone building facing the river 
and being built directly against the high bluff, it 
formed a basement which was open, and as we had 
our provision with us we decided we would lay 
our bedding there and stay for the night. It was 
entirely dark inside and we worked our way back 
without striking a light, as somebody might dis- 
possess us if we did, and spreading out our clothes 
we lay down, when he heard the ominous warning 
of a rattlesnake's tail, which like peas in a bag went 
rattling continually, and kept up such a din we were 
bound to investigate, and by the light of our torch 
which we now carried, we beheld him reaching out 
his long neck from the foundation wall half way 
up and throwing it in every direction with more 
devilish cunning than all the snakes we had ever 
known. The boys manifested some excitement, 
but I told them he would not molest us, and pulling 
our bunk nearer the doorway we stayed there that 
night. I may say here that in this trip we saw more 
rattlers than we ever saw before or since, for the 
River was high, the bottoms flooded and we were 
compelled in traveling along the shore to skirt the 
great rocks which hung from the mountain shelves, 
and there the venemous reptiles lay, but they were 
not dangerous. Many times I shot them when dis- 
covered, and on one occasion when my dog was a 
little in advance I saw a very large one. I stepped 
back one or two steps to dispose of him, when the 



DOG STANDS UPON A RATTLER. 101 

dog, seeing me raise my gun, turned towards me 
to know what I was doing, looking up meanwhile at 
me and not noticing what lay beneath him, he walked 
square upon the rattler and stood upon it, and I ex- 
pected the snake would strike him every moment. 
I tried to scare him off, but to no purpose, then I 




Above La Crescent, Minn. 



ran off at right angles and the dog followed me, 
when I turned and dispatched the reptile. Unless 
they are struck they are not likely to strike back, 
but then, they are like good Indians — the best when 
dead. I never knew anyone bit by them but the 
sight of one coiled will make you shudder. 



102 WE SETTLE WITH S. B. RANDALL. 




Dresbach, Minn. 

We did not get over a dollar for birds this year; 
some sold for seventy-five cents and one box .we 
lost. My real estate man at Sabnla was not very 
active. We did not run across him and there was 
no very great inducement to ship. I heard no more 
from him for several years, but I learned after- 
wards that he did kill some birds but his trade 
never reached any great proportions, and his ship- 
ments were so irregular and desultory they could 
not have paid him much. Such speculations were 
like all others. If you hit it makes a fool of you. 
If you fail you quit. A steady pull brings the sur- 
est rewards and a loss can be recouped by evening 
up with the profits. Eighteen hundred and sixty- 
seven was not a good year, but we made some- 
thing, and the $150 with which we returned home 
we turned over to S. B. Randall, of Cambridge, on 



COLLINS ASKS QUESTIONS. 103 

settlement for an unprofitable trade in poultry the 
preceding winter. Coming down the River this 
season we stopped again at Potosi, where we had 
been in the early part of the season, twelve miles 
above Dubuque, and spread our camp on the west 
side of the slough, which was on the east side of 
the River, over which passed the long bridge, which 
led to the river shore. The water was high ^n3 
copious rains continued to fall. East of the 
bridge the highway led to Potosi, wriggling 
and twisting about between mountain precipices 
whose waters lashed their way in ghostly clamor 
to the pools below. East of the bridge was 
a flat space of land where great cotton woods 
reached their arms into the air and sent unbroken 
shade to the adjoining hills. I think Friend Collins 
will remember this place, so charming was the 
scenery all around the bridge, which the sun reached 
only in mid-heavens. The dust and noise of high- 
ways and thoroughfares dropped through the thin 
air and clung to the foothills. The swallows crossed 
and recrossed the waters, dipping their wings like 
a light oar skimming the surface. Many times Col- 
lins and I sat alone when the day's work was over 
and revived old memories, without the jar of much 
argument, looking only at the quiet side where all 
was peace. This day he seemed to have grown out 
of his usual silence and he asked me abruptly, 
"What do you think of men, anyway? I think thev 
are selfish from first to last, every mother's son of 
them, don't you?" "Why, Lon," I said, "it depends 
a great deal how you take it, what ground the word 
selfish covers. Anyway, it don't mean us, I sup- 
pose," and gave him a quiet smile. He turned his 
eyes away a moment, as though he was afraid he 
had provoked argument, ■ and then, looking down, 



104 THE LONG BRIDGE AT POTOSI. 




Collins Asks the "Unknowable." 



THE HIGHEST MODE OF EXISTENCE. 105 

continued, in his menacing way, that he did not be- 
lieve I would deny the impeachment altogether, and 
then we sailed in, not angrily, I think, but on oppo- 
site ground, which broadened out after a while from 
religion to politics, he denying everything and I 
claiming everything. Of selfishness, I declared it 
must not be confounded with self-love, which every 
man has a part of, and that no one had a right to 
trample upon this instinct of our nature. "Well," 
he continued, as though he had struck it this time, 
"you church people are great hypocrites ; you always 
think you are a little better than anybody else, but I 
never could see it." Watching his eye, I said, calm- 
ly, "Did you ever try to see it? There is a great 
deal in that. Now, I did try and set myself on 
guard for that one thing. When I first came into 
the country a man of great influence and more prej- 
udice advised me that I would find the church peo- 
ple more deceptive than anyone else, and to let them 
alone as untrustworthy, and I now declare to you 
that his whole theory has proved fallacious. Taking 
samples from each, in church and out, the church- 
man has held his own remarkably well, where the 
unchurched has gone down." Again he remarked, 
"I suppose you believe in a man's getting religion 
and all that?" as if that was a stumper; "I never 
wanted religion if it was like what these people say 
it is." I replied, "You probably never heard them 
say, as you claim you never was in a religious meet- 
ing.'' "Well," he said, "where is God, anyway? I 
don't see him and I don't know as there is one, anv- 
way." I continued, "Shut your eyes and you will 
never see, shut your ears and you will never hear, 
and the mysteries will never unfold to human souls." 
He said again, "You think that God can forgive sin, 
do you? I do not." "Why not?" I said, "Don't you 



106 THE "VISION." 

forgive your child when he asks forgiveness ? Sup- 
pose you had offended someone, would you not go 
to him as the proper person to forgive your of- 
fense, and if you did not go, and he should come to 
you, wouldn't you say that he who suffered the in- 
jury was the proper person to forgive it. So God 
says, T will forgive you because you have sinned 
against me.' " He softened a little, with a quiet look, 
and continued, ''Why don't God show Himself so 
I could see Him? Then I might believe on Him." 
''That is a question as old as the human heart," I 
replied, "and you may put it down once for all that 
the Highest Power always does as it chooses, in 
Heaven or in earth, and the highest mode of exist- 
ence is in that form which God chooses, and that is 
a spirit." We relapsed a while into politics, and as 
Collins was a great Democrat, we did not press our 
views much farther, and the talk ended. . I was 
alone, but the long bridge and the cottonwoods and 
the shadows ! I was delighted with the shadows. 
Other shadows came and barred the sunlight and 
threw their taper fingers far over the highway and 
the sickly stream which flowed beneath me, and the 
gloom came with the evening, and at the end of the 
long bridge was sunlight again. And I heard glad 
voices calling unto me, oh, so sweetly, singing the 
songs of the angels until the harmonies of earth and 
sky seemed to meet and mingle in tenderest embrace. 
The sun declined. For a while it shot out shafts of 
heat and light, till, tired of its unequal fight with 
spectres, it sank into its chambers. And there was 
heard the soft notes of viols as 'of an angel band 
disenthralled of pain or passion, sweeping the tender 
chords with the skill of artists and no human love, 
not the deepest enchantment of woman, could reach 
the sublime heights which their melody created. 



A. COLLINS' SUCCESS. 



107 



Night followed and dissolved the shadows, and the 
illusions lost their color and form. The mists were 
slowly rising from the river, the damp with ample 
folds was spreading over the hill sides and along the 
highway, and the cold hovered around me till I re- 
gained shelter, but the vision remained till the day 
dawned and the shadows fled away. Dear old river, 
when the visions become realities there shall be no 
night there ! 




The Trusty Man. 

Of A. Collins it is a pleasure to write in high 
praise. Brought up with the same unfavorable sur- 



108 



A. COLLINS' SUCCESS. 



roundings as his brother, and sedulously instructed 
to avoid houses of worship as sanctuaries of hypo- 
crites he early learned that what he did not under- 
stand or appreciate, he should not sharply criticize 
or condemn. I think if he had been brought up in 
a Christian family, his life would have been sweeter 
and better and more inspiring, and more often he 
would have seen men as living souls and not as trees 
walking. Be that as it may, he has always been a 




Spechts Ferry 



thoroughly honest man, and in the many years he 
toiled with me he committed no act which I would 
care to blot out or strongly shade. He was to be 
trusted anywhere, with any mission he was com- 
petent to fill. He made a wise choice of a small 



THE THREE PROPOSITIONS. 109 

farm north of Annawan, many years ago, and it has 
so improved under his fostering care that it supports 
him well, and he can now pass his days in peace and 
plenty, assured that he owes no man anything. I 
always compliment him on his laugh, for it is in- 
spiring, as soft and coy as a maiden's, and his droop- 
ing lids cover up no traces of undue boldness or 
temerity. We wish him a long and happy life, and 
that he will never forget to sing the old refrain, 

"What shall we do with the drunken sailor? 
Put him in the long boat and let him bail her." 

For many years it became apparent that no man 
could carry on the game business with success where 
his market was a thousand miles or more distant 
unless he could establish, from time to time, the fol- 
lowing propositions: First, that he could cool his 
birds off on ice and keep them there sweet for ten 
days in Spring and Fall, and then ship them without 
ice and without deterioration. Second, he could 
keep his birds dry in cold air of about 30 degrees F. 
and ship them dry for thirty days or more, dry 
chilled and safely. Third, he could freeze his birds 
and keep them frozen and then ship them safely 
after six months or more. Fourth, he could 
pack his birds in air-tight packages, frozen and kept 
at a low temperature, say about 20 F., and keep them 
uninjured for one or more years. The two former 
were comparatively easy, the latter more difficult, 
but by 1890 we believe we had accomplished it all. 

When we shipped in the early years, from 1861 to 
1870, in the Spring, and cooled off the birds thor- 
oughly on ice, we never lost but one shipment, and 
that was by transferring them from one town to an- 
other and letting the warm air work in. With light 



110 FREEZING GAME BEGINS IN 1870. 

shoe boxes, as square as we could get them, we 
pressed them so closely, and they carried so much 
cold with them and retained it so well, that the 
birds could not damage in two or three days. We 
frequently shipped eight hundred birds in one box 
and we received sale for every one of them, when 
sold, with prices ranging generally from two> dol- 
lars to two and a quarter most of the time, and oc- 
casionally higher. Time and again we were warned 
by our consignee that we were likely to lose a whole 
lot any time if we did not ice them, but we did not 
lose them nor did we ice them, and our express was 
so light that it was very profitable. We now pro- 
ceeded to freeze up our birds and hold them in hot 
weather. We had been in the habit of freezing them 
in their natural state in cold weather in Winter, 
when prices were too low, and carrying them 
through the dull season till prices became normal 
again and then unload them. Turkeys and ducks 
were for a long time frozen and held by packers in 
this manner at high altitudes where heat did not 
come till late. We even kept woodcock one season 
from November tin the following Spring in a large 
double grocer's box, opening or closing the lid ac- 
cording to tne weather and never allowing them to 
thaw. We filled this box with grouse and quail in 
December and sold the lot in February following for 
$600. We took a small sled load of mallard ducks 
one day in November, just as the ground was freez- 
ing up, which cost us two twenty-five per dozen, 
packed them snugly away where the air could not 
reach them after they were frozen, and in the month 
of January following surprised the dealers in New 
York by marketing them there at $6.00 per dozen, 
and the buyers were so numerous and so insistent 



FIRST FROZEN MALLARDS 111 

that the only way we could do to prevent a fight was 
to divide them, and this we eventually did. 

In 1870 we heard of a fish dealer in Sandusky 
City, Ohio, who had a patented freezing box for, 
butchers and poulterers, and we went there and saw 
the owner and the box, which was a very good one 
for that early day, and we purchased it for $150.00. 
Later we discovered the patentee in Chicago and we 
bought two more boxes of him, which were to be of 
the same style and quality, but they were not. With 
these boxes for a starter, in the fall of 1870, with 
the assistance of a good carpenter, we set out to 
build our own freezing rooms. We built them be- 
low ground and though they were inferior to those 
that came later, we could and did freeze birds fairly 
well in summer with the aid of the first box we 
bought. 

In the summer of 187 1 we filled it full of wood- 
cocks in June, and kept them in a fairly salable shape 
till September, when we sold them on an order from 
Edward Sumner. We packed them in a can used 
for ice cream, put ice around it, and when they ar- 
rived we received one dollar per pair therefor, which 
we thought was a good price for them at that time. 

We built an outside freezer in Atkinson in the 
Fall of 1 87 1, and we filled it with mallards, pack- 
ing them frozen in November and December as they 
came in, and as the temperature was generally low 
outside and we had pans to freeze hard inside, we 
laid them on top of one another in tiers until the 
room was nearly full. We had no opening in the 
outside but we descended always by a door from 
the top. After a while the birds seemed to settle 
a little, and we packed more on top until we had it 
full, with probably fifteen hundred in all. On the 
top shelf where we went in we placed a few snipe 



112 BUILDS A FREEZER IN ATKINSON 

which came in the last of the season and after all 
the Fall birds, which were packed on ice, were 
spoiled. Before January was over I went to Ke- 
wanee and left the place in charge of R. E. Bailey. 
It was soon getting time to ship them out. After 
taking a few boxes off the top a peculiar smell began 
to arise and he soon found that the inside birds were 
getting soft and spoiling. Before he reached the 
bottom I think one-half had to be thrown away or 
sold for small price. This year the price for the best 
birds was only 62 l / 2 cents per pair, and the demand 
was very slack at that, but we emptied the house. 
The weather was very cold and the birds went 
through cheaply by freight and as good as they left 
us and our loss was not heavy. The few dozen snipe 
remaining on the shelf were separate from every- 
thing else and they kept well frozen and sound, and 
in February Snmner gave me four dollars per dozen 
therefor. These were the first frozen Fall snipe that 
up to that time had been kept over the winter and 
marketed in good order. The mallards spoiled by 
connecting with the ground which drew the frost 
from beneath them. The Spring came again. We 
packed about twenty thousand birds. We shipped 
half of them or more and endeavored to carrv the 
rest until the summer, or when they were called 
for. Prices were good in May and June at about 
$2.50 to $2.75, but we were confined entirely to 
orders if we maintained our price, and the orders 
came now only from A. & E. Robbins that year. 
By August I saw the birds were not as good as they 
had been and his orders were less numerous and 
there was no prospect that he would clear us all out, 
as woodcock were now coming in. Our rooms were 
not cold enough and we could barely keep them 
frozen with great care and expense. I employed 



SELLS DAMAGED JACK SNIPE. 113 

a Mr. Loyd to care for them and I went off on the 
river. In the Fall, after vast quantities of ice had 
been expended, we threw the balance, several hun- 
dred dozen, away. In the Fall following we tried it 
again in our freezing rooms at Kewanee where there 
was less trouble to care for them, and in looking at 
them in the winter I discovered they were getting 
mouldy, which is the first stage of decay, and when 
Mr. Lyon soon after asked if I had any snipe I took 
out a box on his order and sent them to him, some- 
thing over four hundred in number. They looked so 
bad and smelled so musty, I put the balance in an- 
other shoe box, about the same size as the one I 
shipped, took them down near the railroad track 
and buried them in an open ditch, which the com- 
pany soon after filled up. In a few days Mr. Lyon 
returned me over one hundred dollars for the lot I 
sent him, and those I threw away were equally as 
good. This is introduced to show the quality of 
birds which at that time could be sold and which 
now would not be received at any price. The next 
vear I reduced the temperature somewhat lower, and 
though the birds did not open in the Winter quite 
what they should, I sold most of them to Messrs. 
Robbins for $3.50 per dozen. The demand now 
seemed to be increasing, and to cut this story short, 
from 1873 or 1874 to 1878 or 1880, we had uniform- 
ly good prices. I packed all the snipe I could in the 
Fall, frequently getting large numbers in Chicago 
at abotit $1.25 per dozen and selling them in March 
for $3.00 or more, and no one offered any compe- 
tition. By and by, as the demand was very great 
in the early spring and too little in summer for all 
we got in, we conceived the idea of packing them 
up in iron cans, and so carry them through as air 
tight as possible till the Spring following, and then 



114 IN 1879 WE PACK SNIPE IN CANS. 

we would have no surplus to lose, but it was doubt- 
ful how many the market would take, and we op- 
erated with caution and with a feeling of uncertainty 
with the first lot so packed. We had one room 
which stayed remarkably cold, somewhere about 20 
F., and in May we packed there over a thousand 
dozen, besides leaving out enough for our Spring 
and Summer trade. In the Fall the season was wet, 
so that we added a good many more, and when 
the Spring opened we had nearly fifteen hundred 
dozen. This was about 1875 or '76. It was very 
cold in February and we went to New York with 
all our snipe and plover, and some poultry. We be- 
gan putting out our Fall snipe at about $3.50 or 
$3.75, and sold most of them at that price, and they 
were in fine condition and highly spoken of. It re- 
mained now for us to dispose of our canned stock, 
for which we had no little anxiety. Prices had now 
begun to fall, receding to $2.50, and at this price 
we marketed all our birds of the Spring previous 
before fresh birds came in, giving us now two 
chances to unload the crop. In 1876 we had in the 
Winter some three or four hundred dozen Fall snipe 
and about fifty dozen golden plover, and in the lat- 
ter part of February, Mr. Lyon wrote me that there 
was going to be a big demand for good, dry frozen 
birds, and he asked me if I had any, and as I had 
on one previous occasion sold A. & E. Robbins fresh 
birds as high as $4.50 per dozen, I informed him 
that that was my price now. These were fine birds, 
not mouldy at all, and he advised me that he did not 
think he could get that price, but if I would send him 
a barrel he would be sure of $4.00 and he would try 
hard to get the $4.50, and, anyway, it would get 
them on the market, and the quality would be as- 
certained. I sent him the barrel which he sold at 



A NEW SHIPPER COMES IN AT ERIE, ILL. 115 

$4.00, he volunteering the opinion that he did not 
think he could get any more. However, next day 
he ordered a barrel at $4.50 and the plover at $3.50, 
and in a day or two other offers came in for over 
eight hundred dozen at this price, and some who of- 
fered $4.00 raised the price to $4.50 before the day 
was over. In 1877 we were carrying a small amount 
of birds, as the Fall was dry and unfavorable. The 
time came for orders and they did not come. Nei- 
ther dealers nor commission men made any inquiry 
and we were mystified a good deal. Finally it was 
getting so late I wrote to J. A. Lyon to know what 
was meant. He informed me that a man in my 
country, in Erie, was sending what birds they had 
so far needed and when they were sold mine would 
be called for. As this man at Erie knew little or 
nothing of possible values and the buyers offered 
him $2.75 per dozen, and it made him a good mar- 
gin, he ordered them sold. After this it was difficult 
to raise the figures and we had hard work to get 
the same. This man had been with me in several 
excursions, as will appear later, but was anxious to 
get him a breech loader and asked me to get him 
one, which I did. As a year had elapsed and he had 
not been able to pay for it, he solicited a chance to 
work for me in the ice house in winter when I was 
packing, to pay the debt. I took him on and, in the 
course of the winter, he learned enough to think he 
was proficient in packing and handling birds and 
freezing them. When he returned to Erie he put up 
a small freezer on his own account and packed the 
neighboring birds of two or three towns. This was 
why I had no call, as the dealers knew it would cost 
them more if I did. The next year Spring snipe 
were very scarce and sold in New York as high as 
$3-5o, and the Erie man made quite a hit. Then I 



116 COMPETITION BEGINS, BUT SOON ENDS. 

went over to Erie and I employed a man to buy for 
me and he ran the price so high the jig was soon 
up. He could not get birds enough to pay him to 
run his freezer after Spring w T as over, and in the 
following Winter, in the last of January, I was sur- 
prised to receive a letter from him, stating that he 
had two hundred dozen good snipe and he would 
like to sell them to me. As I had only seventy-five 
dozen which I got from Chicago in the Fall previous, 
and was very short, I asked him his price and he re- 
plied that he would deliver them to me for $2.00 
per dozen. I ordered them on and in two or three 
days he arrived overland with the birds. I g~ave 
him four hundred dollars and sold them all within 
thirty days for $4.50 per dozen, when I felt that I 
had squared myself with him. Later he, went to a 
telegraph office above Omaha, and eventually to 
Stewart, Nebr., where he persuaded a party to put 
up a freezer, and where he was in 1895. He proved 
himself dishonest in every position he was in, al- 
though he was a man of good mind and ought to 
have made a success. He was a good telegraph op- 
erator, but he could not hold his post. From 187 1 
we continued to freeze w r oodcocks and sell them 
frozen. We seldom carried less than five or six 
hundred pairs, and sometimes very many more. 
One day we received an order from an unknown 
party in Fulton Market for forty dozen at $1.25 per 
pair net, which I thought might be a mistake for 
four dozen, as it was an unusual number for one 
order, but I sent them and was glad to receive a let- 
ter a day or two afterw r ard stating I must not fail 
to fill the order. Later in the latter part of the 
eighties, we received an order from A. & E. Robbins 
for a barrel at $1.50 per pair, and he liked them so 
well he continued ordering till he had received thir- 



HIGH PRICES, 1878 TO 1885. 117 

teen hundred pair, all of which arrived in good order 
and were promptly paid for. Very many barrels 
were forwarded and sold in those years between 
1878 and 1885 for over three hundred dollars per 
barrel. These sales of woodcock I generally en- 
trusted to J. A. Lyon, as well as the snipe, unless I 
had a direct order. One year prices did not go up 
above one dollar and I did not sell. I put them in 
barrels and carried them over till 1884 and then 
shipped a carload of all kinds of game at once, in 
September, including canvas backs, red heads and 
snipe, and we packed the car in ice and it arrived 
well and sold well, except the woodcock, which sold 
only a barrel or two at half price, and we had them 
returned to us in cow weather, but we never were 
able to dispose of them. We saw, moreover, our 
birds were not keeping as well as they had been, 
and we decided either that our rooms were getting 
in bad order or that we were carrying the birds too 
long. We did not think it would be the latter, for 
many of our oldest birds sold best. We found there 
was very much difference in the keeping qualities of 
different birds we packed, in general the fattest 
birds turning out the best. The early small snipe 
did not hold out as well as the later, and as it hap- 
pened we got two or three barrels of the lighter sort 
where we got one of the heavier. We had a good 
many barrels of the early snipe which we had car- 
ried over from the year preceding, and they were 
getting mouldy, and I could not place them on or- 
ders. We rubbed the mould off the fat birds and 
they sold well, and the last two barrels we had of 
stall-fed pigeons, which were very fat but picked 
and covered with white mould, we cleaned up so that 
we heard no complaint, selling at the extreme price 
of $2.50. 



118 SELLS $1,000 WORTH OF GAME. 

At this time in the Spring the crop of snipe was 
very small ; fine birds sold readily at three dollars 
per dozen the season through. In June I had only* 
two or three barrels of them left. The year before, I 
had become acquainted with Messrs. H. L. Law- 
rence & Co., of Boston, and now the birds giving out 
in that city, his buyer came to Chicago, expecting 
there to get his supplies. As he failed he planned 
to come down and see me. I had at this time a large 
supply of fresh grass plover and I sold them about 
a thousand dollars' worth of birds within an hour 
after he had arrived. He took what fresh snipe I 
had at $3.00, a good many barrels of grass plover at 
$2.00, the small mouldy snipe at . eighty-five cents, 
and the sand snipe at twenty-five cents. I was fear- 
ful he would have some trouble in disposing of the 
mouldy birds, but he said afterwards he did well 
with them on account of the scarcity of better birds, 
and he gave me about fifty per cent higher than I 
could get in New York. 

DOW BIRDS SELL WELL. 

I had a few barrels of Dow birds. They seemed 
to keep better as they were very fat, and what little 
mould there was rubbed off easily enough. These 
brought me six dollars and a half a dozen when win- 
ter came, and I had now reduced my stock of old 
birds so low that I only had twenty-five or thirty 
barrels left of all kinds, and I considered it the best 
time I would have to rebuild my freezer. I found 
that the same ice did not produce the same cold 
after the freezer had • run twelve months or more 
and it began to have an old smell. The longer I 
run it the iller it got. I initiated a new plan at that 
time, of entirely isolating the rooms from contact 



PACK QUAILS IN AIR-TIGHT CANS. 119 

with outside air. I not only made the walls so thick 
and so numerous that they were impervious to heat 
or cold, filling the spaces with dry charcoal, but I 
built a new room entirely inside of this outside shell 
and made the air have connection from one side to 
the other so there w T as a constant movement all 
around the outside. Immediately on completing this 
a great change was wrought in the appearance of 
the birds and the temperature declined several de- 
grees lower and remained there more steadily, so 
that if any sudden change occurred from any out- 
side cause, there would be more degrees to spare to 
reach thawing point. As the winter passed away, 1 
accumulated a large stock of quail, and I hardly 
dared to risk them through the season in ordinary 
packing. I fell back to the cans, which I had used 
two or three years previously for snipe, and as they 
were altogether too large to handle with ease, we 
made new ones and smaller, and we experimented 
how we should make them air tight. The cans, as 
now made, held about the size of a sugar barrel. 
We marketed the remaining old birds whenever we 
could get an opportunity, what were good selling 
readily. 

Some were showing signs of mould that we 
carried through the summer and we had to sell 
them at a loss, and dealers began to complain and 
to discriminate against us, and in the winter, with 
much effort we sold the stock all out, the fat, heavy 
birds doing very well, the poor birds at a low price. 
We found canvas backs and red heads would sell 
well and look well the winter following, but if car- 
ried farther were very liable to show decay. As we 



120 CANVAS BACK AND RED HEADS. 

were packing about three hundred barrels a year at 
this time it was necessary to improve our packing 
and storage. We took four or five hundred dozen 
quail that we had left in the Spring and packed 
them in cans and sealed them the best we knew, and 
they cost us $1.50 per dozen. In October they 
opened up so well we sold them to Fred Smith, of 
Chicago, for $2.75 and $3.00 per dozen, and Fred 
declared they were the finest he had ever seen held. 
We laid out over one thousand dollars in cans in 
1890 and 1892 and they paid for themselves hand- 
somely every year and we could fill them again very- 
many times. Even if we had to lose the cans every 
year it was a great success. Finally we packed all 
our game in cans and when we kept the temperature 
steady and low enough we never lost anything. 
We began to pack birds from all along the river, 
from Wabasha to New Albin and Lansing, and as 
far down as Savannah, and by putting them in shape 
secured the top price for many really poor birds. 
Wet birds we dried, rough birds we smoothed out, 
and if the meat was sweet and sound we made sales 
readily. We bought large lots of snipe in Chicago 
and quails and red heads and canvas backs in their 
season for many years, and we had no trouble to 
dispose of them at good profit. The first canvas 
back and red head we held in barrels in 1883 to 
1885, and the trade was not as critical as it is now. 
They usually sold at $2.50 to $3.00 per pair for 
canvas, and at 75 cents to $1.25 for red heads. 
As the canvas change their color from Spring to 
Fall, dealers began to be wary and demand Fall 
birds and Springs birds were not much wanted. 
Teal also, which had been selling at about sixty 
cents a pair, sold anywhere from twenty-five to 
fifty, 011 account of their changed color in the 



SELLS 6 BARRELS CANVAS BACKS FOR $i,ooo 121 

Spring, while green wings, red heads, quail, grouse 
and partridges and snipe did not publish their age. 
In 1885 or 1886 there was a distinctly loud call for 
canvas backs in December and I received an order 
through J. A. Lyon which did not specify anything, 
whether Fall or Spring birds, and, in fact, the ques- 
tion was not raised. In the previous year I had re- 
ceived quite a good many red heads and canvas 
backs and the red heads did not seem to sell. We 
kept them in New York for several months and 
were at last forced to sell the red heads at 85 cents 
per pair. The canvas back we disposed of earlier. 
When Mr. Lyon wrote me that he had sold all the 
red heads he advised me not to put up any more 
frozen ducks, as they were discriminated against so 
much. Without paying any attention to his advice 
I sent a buyer to the Illinois River in March, who 
gathered up, with a little outside hejp, thirty-six bar- 
rels, red head and canvas, six barrels being canvas 
and the balance red head. The canvas cost about 
$6.50 a dozen and the red heads $2.50. When Mr. 
Lyon inquired if I had any canvas backs in the win- 
ter, as I have stated, and what price I wanted, I in- 
formed him they would be five dollars per pair, as 
I had seen some quotations at that price, and that I 
had six barrels which would count about two hun- 
dred pair. In two or three days he ordered them 
by express and it was now very cold weather. 
Messrs. A. & E. Robbins got the birds, to be de- 
livered on an order which they had previously re- 
ceived from Delmonico's, where they were offered 
and refused by that house because they were Spring 
birds. This threw them back on Messrs. Robbins, 
but as the birds had been accepted from us, after 
some grumbling and a demand for a reduction in 
price, they were finally paid for as we sold them, 



122 . SELLS 30 BBLS. RED HEADS. 

After this there was a steady call for reel heads 
in February and March. We sold a barrel in De- 
cember for $2.00 per pair. Later they raised to 
$2.25 and $2.50, and the last three barrels were sold 
in March at $3.00 per pair. The market was in 
such a delicate state we could only sell one or two 
barrels at a time, but when the last barrel had gone 
we found we had a net profit between twenty-nine 
hundred and three thousand dollars on the thirty-six 
barrels. That was the high tide on them, for al- 
though birds further advanced to $6.00 per pair, we 
only sold two or three barrels afterwwards to Sum- 
ner as high as five dollars a pair for Spring birds. 

In 1867, at the time of the rupture at Savannah 
and Sabula with the hunters there, we conceived the 
idea of building a small steam boat, run by ourselves 
and drawing but little water, with which we could 
penetrate all the back places along the river where 
the birds were the most plenty, and in 1868 we 
began to put this plan into effect. It was the more 
necessary because the railroads were not running 
up far on the east side and none on the west side of 
the river, and it was extremely difficult to reach the 
best ground with a skiff, and more so with the ice 
which made our great burden. Besides, we had 
to ship by steamboat at the nearest landing we could 
reach and thence they were transferred to railroad 
towns, by which, in the long run, we lost one or two 
boxes and several more were damaged. By means 
of a steamboat we could use our own conveyance 
and could provision it and make our shipments 
and have our home on board. We contracted 
with a boat builder in Davenport,, Iowa, to put us 
up such a boat as we needed and have it ready fo r 
delivery July 4th. We hardly knew what we did 
\yant ancl we left the construction very much to tlf^ 



STEAMBOAT FIREFLY— 1868. 123 

builder. It was to be forty feet long, eight feet 
beam, model bow, side wheel, and the engine to be 
three horse power. There was a walk around the 
boat of two feet more on each side. The front, in 
tne hold, was divided off into a large recess for ice 
and a circular roof covered the whole. We did our 
cooking in front and had our sleeping berths in the 
back end. Also, we steered our boat in the begin- 
ning from the front. Later we abandoned it for the 
stern and with a raised platform we had the pilot 
house there. The boiler was a poor, second-hand 
affair and it would not at this day have been tol- 
erated in any water, but it was not intended for pas- 
senger traffic or fast sailing, but with some im- 
provements it answered our purpose as long as 
needed. This little vessel we named the "Firefly," 
from its diminutive size and the flash light from 
the smoke stack. 

This is the boat that once was tossed 
From Island Rock unto LaCrosse. 
Unknown its nature or its name, 
Whither it went or whence it came. 
No penant flung, no beacon flew, 
No seas of foam inspired the crew. 
Without a pilot or a chart, 
Without a merchant or a mart; 
Past the great ships that hurried on 
To their own land, this one had none. 

Past rising towns whose stately stone 
Fell down before the great cyclone, 
Never a timber, never a spar, 
Floated the vessel near or far, 
By lordly barons owned. Its keel 
In shallow waters planned to steal, 
By lonely pools and fetid fen, 



124 BUILT AT DAVENPORT, IOWA. 

Forest and rock and shade and glen, 
Beyond the homes and haunts of men 
It journeyed on. 

The hull of the vessel was framed very strongly, 
with ribs of oak a few inches apart, and this, with 
the floor laid of only one-inch boards, saved us from 
foundering many times. The machinery was not 
fastened to the bottom of the boat as solidly as it 
should have been, and as we shall see, soon caused 
us much trouble in a trying moment. When we 
learned the boat was completed, immediately after 
July 4th, Mrs. M., myself and the two boys took 
possession at Davenport, in a very hot spell of 
weather, and there selected our companions du voy- 
age. We lay there for several hours, tied up just 
below the wharf of the ferry boat, completing our 
outfit of ice and necessary provisions for an absence 
of a week from the city. The river below and 
partly abreast of us was shut in by a boom of logs 
that started from the boat and ran out many rods 
into the current, and the delight of the boys was to 
walk the logs and wade in the river. We were all 
very busy and did not notice for a while that either 
of the boys was absent, but when the knowledge be- 
came known to us, Clarence, the younger, was found 
sitting on one of the logs many rods out in the 
stream, and when told to come in he was disinclined 
to do so. However, the usual persuasion discovered 
to us he had slipped off one of the logs into the 
river and was now trying to dry himself in the sun- 
shine. He made no outcry or expressed any fear, 
and he looked to me very much like a New Zea- 
lander content to sit on his log and float away to any 
shore the winds might carry him. 

We had a small amount due yet on the boat and 



PASS THE MISSISSIPPI BRIDGE, 



125 




The Boy Too Busy to Drown. 



while the fire was starting in the boiler I went to 
the Rock Island Bank of Lynde & Co. 1 never 
had been in the bank before and carried no refer- 
ence, and merely stated I wanted to draw one hun- 
dred dollars on New York, and that the little vessel 
built across the river was mine. The banker made 
no objection, asked me for no references, handing 
me the money, and, by five o'clock or thereabouts, we 
started on our journey with the rapids before us. 



126 GET ON WRONG SIDE OF THE RlVER. 

We expected to hire no skilled machinist, as the 
hunters we took on board had some experience, and 
they soon learned to handle the boat fairly well. I 
think there were nine men of us besides Mrs. M. 
and children. Among the rest we carried the two 
Ogden boys, James Joles, Bart Potter, Johnny 
O'Brien, Ike Seyberts, Charles Collins and Orm 
Brown, a motley crew, with no bonds to bind them 
further than the profit they expected to make and 
the novelty and fun of the enterprise. Ike took to 
the furnace. Collins guided the wheel. The rest 
left on foot one way or another, advising us to go 
ahead and they would meet us farther up the river. 
They had no dogs and we did not know why. It 
did not develop for what purpose they went till we 
had got along up a mile or so above the city > where 
we stopped for the night and the hunters began to 
come in, each of them with one or more dogs. We 
found the water very swift when we began to pass 
the railroad bridge and continuously afterward, and 
we ran over just before dark on the Government Is- 
land, expecting to find the water there less rapid. 
While we lay there a few minutes trying to increase 
our steam, an officer found us and informed us we 
must not stay on the Island longer than we could 
possibly help. We soon steamed up again and 
landed on the west shore, camping for the night in- 
side the fence on the long grass, a pleasant place 
enough with all the cover we wanted, for it was very 
hot. We started early in the morning, following the 
dogs tugging at their chains and yelping a miserere 
by the time the smoke left the smoke stack. It was 
suggested that we hitch them on and have them 
draw us up the river, as there were no whales in 
sight, and their superfluous power was being wasted. 
Their bark, when tied up, was like steam pipes under 



STUCK ON ROCKS BELOW LeCLAIRE 127 

pressure and their grand notes and high solos were 
proof against sleep in the morning. We got away, 
some by water and some by land, with a current not 
now very swift as long as we followed the line of 
the shore. The boat was not drawing over one foot 
of water. By middle of the afternoon the boat was 
abreast the coffer dam, which begins somewhere 
opposite Moline. Then it proceeded slowly up sev- 
eral miles, receding farther from the west shore and 
meeting much rough water. Whether the rocks 
threw the helmsman out into the channel or whether 
he was experimenting to find easier water, I never 
knew, but looking across toward the middle of the 
rapids from the great flat which forms the bay be- 
low LeClaire, we saw that the boat was there and 
in trouble, and evidently on the rocks outside of 
the channel, and apparently unable to get away. It 
developed afterwards that in this crucial moment the 
foundation of the machinery tore up and it required 
some time to replace it strong enough to hold till 
they could pull off the rocks. Marion Ogden was 
on shore with me nearly half a mile off, along the 
deep bay that reaches into the mainland on the west 
shore. The water was not deep between us and the 
boat, and for fear it would not get loose and because 
Mrs. M. was on the boat with part of the crew, and 
suffering terribly from the heat outside and inside, 
he made his way to the vessel, took her in his arms 
and transported her to the shore. About the time he 
reached there the boat got loose again and gradually 
worked its way on up the river till it reached the 
point by the old mill, just below LeClaire, where we 
passed the night, all hands being present. In the 
morning we had only a short space of rough water 
till the upper end of the rapids was passed and we 
continued on up easily. To the people of LeClaire 



128 GET SOME FREE ADVERTISING. 




Mrs. M. Makes Off with Another Man. 



we were a wonder of wonders. Their evening sheet 
came out with a long account of the new arrival, 
which, it stated, was composed of men, women, chil- 
dren and dogs. Getting some provisions, we left 
LeClaire, still following up the west side till we 
ran into some old piles, the remains of a former 
lumber fleet that were sunken under the surface of 
the water. They were cut off smoothly on the top, 
over which our boat traveled and nearly balanced 



WE REACH SABULA AND HUNTSVILLE. 129 




Savanna— Old Town. 



itself when about midway, and held so fast we 
thought the bottom had pushed through. Luckily 
it did not, when, passing over to the east shore, 
we resumed our way and before noon passed Port 
Byron. We continued on up to Camanche, making 
that our stopping place where we could get our table 
supplies and in the morning dropped down to the 
Wapsiepinicon River, where we did our first hunt- 
ing. Mrs. M. was so overcome with heat we had 
to carry her out on the shore under the shade of 
some great trees where she passed the day. We 
stopped at the mouth of the Wapsie and there Mrs. 
M. discovered the first and only humming bird's nest 



130 MOUTH OF THE MAQUOKETA RIVER. 

we ever saw. The nest, holding two eggs, we re- 
tained, which we brought home with us when we 
returned. Unfortunately the eggs were broken, but 
the nest we have kept ever since. In the two days 
we were at the mouth of this river we killed one 
hundred and thirty birds, shipped them at the end 
of the second day at Albany, which village hacl been 
riddled and torn with the battle of wind and hail in 




Maquoketa River. 



i860. By the time we reached Sabula we had our 
banners all out, moving closely along the Iowa shore 
with great crowds meeting and cheering us as we 
went, and with wind and steam we saluted them all. 
About twelve miles further up we reached Hunts- 
ville, an insignificant place at the mouth of the 
Maquoketa River opposite, before we began to hunt 



Among the islands below dubuque. i3i 

again. Farther up we passed Bellevue, then crossed 
to the east shore, took up a Slough that runs along 
past the mouth of the Galena River, then out into 
the main channel again and along the islands below 
Dubuque. Often when the boat was moving slow-' 
ly along some of the crew would rush ashore and 
shoot a while, then jump on again when they got a 
little tired or reached a slough they could not cross, 




Dubuque's Grave. 



and in this way many woodcock came in. Next day 
we passed East Dubuque, and further up about five 
or six miles we reached the islands where Coflins 
and I had such good shooting two years before, and 
here remained one day. Then we took to the Slough 



132 AMONG THE ISLANDS BELOW DUBUQUE. 




Rock Cut on the Catfish below Dubuque. 



again, which begins close by the lower point of the 
island and runs back up the east side and ends at 
Grant Slough, from which a canal is cut into the 
river opposite Specht's Ferry. We passed up to the 
bridge that crosses the road to Potosi and the river 



AMONG THE ISLANDS BELOW DUBUQUE. 133 

and could not get under the bridge on account of 
our high smoke stack, which we had to take down. 
We tarried one or two clays alongside of the Canal 
and found many birds. While we were away from 
the boat one day, two deer crossed the Slough close 
by, which were the only ones we saw on our route. 
There were wild hogs innumerable and Collins shot 




Dubuque. 



one, and it was dressed and served up on the boat. 
It had a wild and unsavory taste and we preferred 
the hams which were our usual fare. After going 
through the canal into the river we went about a 
mile farther up till we reached another slough on 
the east side and, following it along up to its upper 
end, we stayed a day. Close by, on a bend of the 



134 AMONG THE ISLANDS BELOW DUBUQUE. 




East Dubuque and Railroad Bridge. 




Mouth of Catfish, Below Dubuque. 



TURKEY RIVER AND CASSVILLE, WIS. 135 

slough, we found a little spring house with a stream 
running from it, and looking in, the boys found 
pans of milk which they sampled freely and after- 
wards named it the Milk Slough. 

We passed Cassville in a few days and the mouth 
of the Turkey River a mile above, where' we found 




Eagle Point, Above Dubuque. 



many birds. Still on we went above Guttenberg, 
another German town, and nearly opposite the little 
town of Glen Haven there is an island on the west 
side along the point of which, in its upper end, near- 
ly all the river boats have to pass in low water, and 
here we stopped a day or two to hunt out the island. 
We knew next to nothing about the channels for 
river boats at that time and while landed here there 
came down around the point a big river boat which 



136 TURKEY RIVER AND CASSVILLE, WIS. 

passed so close to our vessel that it nearly submerged 
it, throwing the waves all over it, throwing it upon 
the shore and nearly overturning it, falling back at 
last into the trough of the sea which the great 
ship had scooped out. The captain of the vessel 
hailed us as he passed and said we were in the most 
dangerous part of the river possible, that the boats 
had to make that sudden turn in low water and were 




Broken Bridge at Eagle Point above Dubuque. 



unable to give us any warning, and that to save 
our lives and property we ought to move away, 
which we soon did. East of this there are two is- 
lands, one of which comes up from opposite Gut- 
tenberg and is divided by a narrow passage from 
the island that flanks Glen Haven on the north, 
and here in this channel we landed and were sleep- 



TURKEY RIVER AXD CASSVILLE, WIS. 137 





138 GET TANGLED UP WITH A STEAMBOAT. 




Turkey River Above the Mouth. 



ing quietly in the night when a huge boat came up 
from below, attempted to land, and caught into our 
skiff, which was tied to the end of the boat, and it 
got so mixed up with it that the captain, coming 
forward and seeing the trouble, backed out into 'the 
river again and went on his way. In the morning 
we came near getting into a trouble with the men 
on the landing, for it turned out that this was a 
woodyard where the boat got its supplies and we 
were blamed for not permitting it to land. At 
this point James Joles killed forty birds in one day 
on the lower island not far away, and this was the 
first big shot that anyone at that time had made. 
We put out our tent on the channel between the 
islands and many of us slept ashore there while we 
stayed. One night, coming in, I was shown two 



WE HUNT BELOW McGREGOR, IOWA. 139 

or three monstrous rattlers which the boys had killed 
that day. We were now taking it quite easily, some 
of the hunters had left us, and we did not retain 
over half of the number that shipped with us. The 
few that remained did better, and the weather began 
to be cool and bracing. We shipped a number of 
boxes from Guttenberg near by, then passed on up- 
wards to Prairie Du Chien and McGregor. South 




Railroad Bridge and Wisconsin River. 

of McGregor half a mile there is a small bay run- 
ning up from the river between two cliffs on the 
mountain side, where a little flat sets in, and by it, 
on the water's edge, there was then a fine spring 
which was so enticing we remained there some days. 
Across the river at this point, a little lower down, 
was the mouth of the Wisconsin and there was much 
good hunting ground adjacent. This open ground 
where we landed covered half an acre or more, and 
the cows would come along down from town pas- 
turing here as they went and loth to leave on their 



140 SEYBERTS AND COLLINS HAVE A RACKET. 

journey among the hills that flanked the sides of the 
bay, and at night returning with full udders they 
wended their way slowly along or rested awhile. 
The boys soon enough discovered that this was their 
dairy, and penning up those that x would not stop 
themselves they drew therefrom bountiful streams 
that went to modify their Rio. One evening Charlie 




Pictured Rocks Below McGregor. 

Collins, who always had a penchant for .getting up 
high and coming down low, climbed up this lofty 
hilltop, and to show he was there and make a great 
noise began throwing down the biggest stones he 
could find, roaring and tumbling like a volcano, and 
Ike, who was intent on getting the lacteal fluid and 
had his cow penned up against the steep hill side, 
was too mad for quiet when this downpour of rock 



SEYBERTS AND COLLINS HAVE A RACKET. 141 

was precipitated upon the land, which disturbed 
muley so much that she- kicked over his pail and 
gave Ike some pains in the sublateral region, which 
created much merriment. Ike tried it again with no 
better success, when he halloed up to Collins to quit 

his d d monkeying or he would come up there 

and kill him. As he and Charles were always in a 




Pretty Cave Bejow McGregor. 



quarrel it began to smell around there something 
like the flavor of brimstone till Charlie came down 
with his usual apology, laughed loudly, in which 
Ike joined him and it was all blown over. The 
crowd chaffed Ike a great deal about this occurrence, 
but the rest of the crew bore the loss bravely which 
the destruction of the milk brought them. While 
we were there one morning there was a slight noise 



142 



ADVENTURE WITH A RATTLER. 



upon the roof of the boat, and looking out we dis- 
covered a rattler sliding along /down but giving no 
warning of his presence till he landed on the bow, 
and Mrs. M. was so frightened she ordered Ike to 
kill it immediately, which he did. It turned out 
that Ike, on going to a spring to drink before he 
landed here, had heard the familiar sound of a 




A rattler whose room was better than his company. 

m 

rattler close by, and getting a box had put the reptile 
therein, after pulling out his fangs, as he said he 
did. If so, they had grown out again in the short 
time he had been on the boat, and Ike was warned 
not to repeat the performance. 

Guttenberg is quite an industrious, thriving Ger- 
man town, and as one of the leading citizens there 
was named Crawford, I always thought of the noted 



MRS. M. INTERROGATES THE INDIANS. 143 

novelist of that name when I visited it. Glen Haven, 
on the east side, is also a small German town, and 
the only man who seemed to possess any skill was a 
watch maker and he could do almost any kind of 
work on machinery to perfection, and fixed up any 
breakage we might have many times. We stayed 
one day at Prairie Du Chien and passed up the river 




Looking from Pike's Peak Towards Wisconsin River. 



on that side. Across on the island was an Indian 
camp, whither Mrs. M. was very anxious to go and 
visit. As she had our dog with her the bucks were 
very anxious to secure it, which they claimed would 
be "good eat" when he became fat, and fat dogs are 
their specialty. With plenty of green corn in the 
summer, which they appropriate from the growing 
crops of the farmers near at hand, and the muskrats, 



144 MRS. M. INTERROGATES THE INDIANS. 

which they take at all times of the year and which 
form their staple meat, they manufacture succotash 
in the summer in the Indian style, which is kept 
cooking constantly in a large iron kettle over the 
fire, the women doing the work and the bucks 
mostly asleep. Their filth does not seem to destroy 
their life or make their morals any worse, neither 




North McGregor Point. 

are they shy at begging. From Prairie Du Chien 
we passed up to Lansing, shooting over the inter- 
mediate ground, and on beyond Lynxville,, and a 
few miles farther up we stayed several days, not 
going as far as DeSoto, but nearer the opposite 
shore. The birds did not seem to be very plenty 
here ; it was very dry, and they seemed to have left 



SMOKE STACK GIVES OUT. 



145 



the wooded beds and dry valleys and gone into very 
thick cover. Not a track of any living being was 
to be seen in the bottoms across from Lynxville, 
except occasionally the barefoot track of an Indian. 
This was fine ground for birds, plenty of cool, 
shady places and little draws where we usually 
found them, and we did not kill more than eight or 




South McGregor. 



ten birds a day each. We started to work down 
the river again and we had not gone very far before 
one of our flues gave out and the smoke and heat all 
escaped up the smoke stack and we were where we 
could not repair it short of McGregor, therefore we 
pushed out into the stream and allowed the boat to 
float down sideways, as the waters carried it, only 
working with our skiffs alongside to keep the boat 



146 SEYBERTS AND COLLINS LAND TO FIGHT. 

from swinging and to pull it out of the channel in 
case a big boat should find us in their way. We 
were now reduced to four or five men and Seyberts 
was in the skiff and Collins was back of the boat 
doing some mending. Ike, with his usual devilish- 
ness, began to row with one oar, the outside one, of 
which there was no need whatever, and as if by mis- 
take he skipped the blade of the oar over the top 
of the water in a kind of skimming fashion, and by 
so doing threw a large amount of water into Collins' 
face and lap. Ike apologized slightly but in a few 
minutes repeated the mistake. Collins began to get 
angry and he told Ike that if he did that again he 
would come down into the skiff and throw him into 
the river. The wetting continued, and Charlie said 
to O'Brien to turn the prow of the boat around to- 
wards the shore, that they were going asliore and 
Ike and he were going to fight it out. Johnny 
turned the boat point forward to the shore and he 
and all aboard was laughing at the fun that was in 
store. I was on the shore at that time, running 
along through the brush, hunting as I went and 
keeping easily abreast of the boat, which had noth- 
ing to propel it but the waves, and looking out oc- 
casionally through the bushes, I saw the boat head- 
ing towards me, apparently as if to land. Those 
that were on the boat were setting up a great glee 
at the prospect of the fight, and the champions 
stood with knitted brows glaring at each other as the 1 
boat was about to land. I supposed it was landing 
to take me on. I made towards the boat as it struck 
the shore. The champions stood a while as if un- 
decided what to do, and the crew meanwhile poking 
fun at them and daring them to fight, till Charlie 
began to laugh, when the whole thing fell through, 
the boat shoved out into' the stream again, and no 
blood came from either of them. 



WE RETURN TO TURKEY RIVER 147 

We went over to North McGregor and had our 
flue repaired on Sunday, at the elevator, and Mon- 
day we descended to Turkey River, just above Cass- 
ville. This is a bottom of heavy timber on both 
sides for a mile or more back from the main river. 
I was on the south side of the stream, hunting away 
with very fair success in the afternoon, when it be- 
gan to grow dark more suddenly than I expected. 
The day seemed to shorten up and the hills in the 
west threw a dark mantle over the valley. Night 
was coming on unmistakably and I left for the river 
bank where the boat lay. Collins had come in for 
the same cause as myself, with the additional one, as 
he explained, that he was "all fired up" with the 
mosquitoes which attacked his neck and face without 
mercy. I had put on a preparation, so they hurt me 
but very little, while his neck and ears were red and 
swollen. After getting our meal the darkness began 
to fade away and the light to strengthen, and short- 
ly the sun broke out into the sky and it was only 
three or four o'clock. It was an eclipse of the sun. 
The fowls began to crow in the farmyard as though 
another day was approaching, and we slept the rest 
of that day. We stopped at Cassville and it was 
getting cold now, along the first of October. Our 
landing for several days was opposite the governor's 
house, and his wife frequently came out to see us. 
Our little boys ferried me across the river every day, 
and over against the bluff side the shooting was 
good. Later we passed below Jack O and into the 
Milk Slough again, staying a few days and returned 
to Cassville to ship. As we started to leave the 
slough we perceived a lot of bark piled up near the 
shore and before we left we filled our boat with it 
for fire and steam, as it took no labor to prepare it. 
We started out just before dark and had gotten 



148 AND THEN TO OASSVILLE, AND BELOW. 

fairly in the river when it began to rain. The 
winds blew and beat upon us and our motion was 
slow and heavy, but our bark fire was a terrible dis- 
appointment as it made little steam and we were 
hours, working up against Buena Vista till we got in 
the channel between Jack O and the east shore, 
without which we would never have seen the city 
that night. It was so dark between the shore and 
the island that much of the time we had to guess 
our way, and running close to the island to avoid 
heavy seas, we encountered tree tops innumerable 
that had fallen over into the river, and often we had 
to back out to save our smoke stack. It was mid- 
night when we landed at Cassville again and in the 
morning the boys of the town reported another 
ship had come in during the night, and the Gover- 
nor's wife came out to see if it was so. "What boat 
is that came in last night?" she said, and down she 
came and talked awhile with us very pleasantly. 
Our crew was reduced to only one man, Collins and 
myself, and we found a good many birds for the 
middle of October. While we were there it froze 
very hard one night. The boys had picked up some 
small turtles which they kept in a pan to look at ; 
not over two or three inches across their backs, 
spotted and with little short tails ; they were quite 
an attraction. We had planned to take them with 
us when we went home, but the cold was so intense 
that night that it froze ice over in the pails and our 
little guests were cooked in the morning dead. We 
pulled down the river again the last week of Octo- 
ber, Mrs. M. firing the boat and Collins at the rud- 
der. Three or four miles above Dubuque we landed 
on the west shore where there were some bottom 
lands, and it was cloudy and foggy from the cold 
the night previous. We did not stop over an hour, 



RETURN TO CASSVILLE AND HUNT. 149 

and I picked up my gun while dinner was getting 
ready. In that time I raised seven partridges, and 
killed six of them, the one that escaped not coming 
up within reach. Before dark we were below 
Dubuque at the east shore opposite the point of the 
first island you meet. Here were a few cottonwoods 
on the shore, while on the island a lumber fleet had 
put in and tied up for the night, and the wind rocked 
out little vessel like a cradle till the morning ap- 
peared again. We reached LeClaire just before 
night the following day and we prepared to run the 
rapids. There was a comparatively narrow channel 
where it was safe for big boats to go, but they sel- 
dom ventured out before morning, laying by at 
LeClaire. We did not know this channel, and when 
we entered the current the great momentum of the 
flood from above struck us, and we went with a 
plunge down the incline. The helmsman could hard- 
ly keep on his feet, and the mad rush of the waters 
made one dizzy to look overboard, as it would from 
a high tower. We looked at one another with as- 
tonishment, the voice semed to freeze to our lips, 
and every lurch of the vessel seemed to send a 
thrill into our veins, and we could only meditate 
rapidly as we would when going over an abyss. For 
a moment we would glance at the waters, hoping 
that the prow would not meet an obstruction and 
turn the boat against the current, in which case we 
would have been swamped in an instant and the 
craft sunk to the bottom, but it bowled on. No one 
had advice to give, or, if given, it would have passed 
unheeded, and the awe of the moment crept over 
us. We felt we were pygmies in a boisterous flood 
that was sweeping us madly on to eternity. We 
probably had descended a quarter of a mile, hoping 
and waiting, with our feet braced against the bottom 



150 RUN CHANNEL OF THE RAPIDS. 






*-# 



— '*»»* 







t^igv*®^ ^tf* 



4» 



M J* , . 



«■( » <MW%W»ifc_ -5 •:■• 



The Boat That Was Founded on a Rock. 



BOAT RESTS EASILY. 151 

of the boat, when every jar tortured us like a knife 
thrust through our bodies, and the speed of the ves- 
sel mounting up, as it seemed, to a mile in a minute, 
the water swirling against the sides and licking up 
the bubbles that burst from the eddies or broke into 
rainbows far down the channel. All at once the boat 
struck something, a hidden rock, over which it 
grazed a moment, then whirled to the left with the 
speed of lightning and vaulted out of the trough of 
the sea over the obstruction and swinging around 
threw the boat crossways of the channel, and landed 
us dry upon a long, flat rock, against which the 
waves pelted and dashed pitifully. This w r as done 
so quickly, I hardly had time to take breath, or even 
to look after the family, which, for an instant, 
thought death was upon them. As the speed stopped 
and the boat rested easily we regained our senses 
and began examining what sort of a place we were 
in. The water was not over a foot deep on the flat 
rock which extended the length of the boat, and we 
found that the boat, once on, could not get off, as 
the flood drove it farther on and the rise of the rock 
prevented it from going over. We were not ten 
feet east of the main channel. A few feet further 
west we would have passed over safely. It was now 
getting dark and no help could be had from any 
quarter. We were half a mile from any land and 
we were regaled with the wild music of the winds 
as it rushed through the rigging. I quieted the 
family as well as I could and assured them we could 
not possibly be carried away. I lay down and slept 
well, but their sleep was badly broken, if they had 
any at all. In the morning we could see better. On 
the east shore was a small hamlet, Rapids City, and 
we got out our skiff to go there for assistance,, when 
a boat left that shore carrying two men, who soon 



152 WE ARE RESCUED FROM RAPIDS CITY 

came to us and told us what to do to escape. We 
had not power enough to breast the current, even 
where we were with the water shallow, so they or- 
dered us to steam up while they got a line in front 
of the boat with their skiff, and as the steam raised 
the combined power of the two carried us forward, 
past and around this rocky headland and into the 
channel again. We saluted our helpers, waved our 
hands at them, and rolled on again down the fierce 
current, following the instructions which were given 
us, and in due time we passed the whole length of 
the rapids, passed the Big Bridge, unloaded the 
family, and ran the boat down the island below 
Davenport, where, with a nice anchorage, we tied 
up the vessel for the winter. In this trip we killed 
and shipped fifteen hundred pairs of woodcocks. 

THE FIREFLY GOES DOWN THE TENNESSEE 
RIVER FOR WINTER OF 1869. 

The following summer birds were low during 
July and August, down to fifty cents per pair, and 
we did not move the Firefly. In the Fall a party 
came and wanted to hire it for the winter, saying 
they were going down on the Tennessee River to 
hunt ducks, and I let them have it. They went 
down around Memphis and attempted to return in 
the Spring, and they got as far back as Point Pleas- 
ant, in Missouri, when they abandoned the boat. I 
took two men, Collins and Charles Beach, from Dav- 
enport, and we went down and brought it back as 
far as St. Louis, which point we could not pass on 
account of the swift water, but as there was a vessel 
there about to depart up the river, we secured trans- 
portation for all of us to our railroad station, and 
Mr. Beach and the Firefly to Davenport, for One 
Hundred Dollars, and the above named Beach con- 



FIREFLY LIES AT GARDEN PLAIN. 153 

tracted to run us up the river again in July, 1870. 
We went up there much as we did the year before, 
and we spent most of the time between Dubuque and 
LaCrosse, running up awhile into Root River, 
where Kindred found so many birds four years be- 
fore. We had a small crew, not over four or five 
persons, and my family did not go. As the birds 
got thinner along in the summer, Collins and Beach 
took a run out on the railroad to Cresco, Iowa N , 
where they found a great many chickens, and I 
went with them, leaving the boat in the meanwhile 
with Barton and the boys at McGregor, from which 
point, when they got through, they ran the boat, 
down to Garden Plain, a few miles below Rock 
Rapids. The weather was cold when we first com- 
menced to hunt chickens, the first of September, as 
low as 40 F. in the morning, and we thought our 
birds would keep till we got a box, but it grew 
warmer. We had no ice and the birds, apparently 
sound when they were shipped, arrived in New 
York in very bad order, so much so we got very lit- 
tle for them. Then we abandoned shipping and 
went to storing the balance of the month, and I be- 
came acquainted with a baggage man at Prairie Du 
Chien, Charles Stannard by name, who was one of 
those happy souls not often met with, ever ready to 
help anybody, oftentimes even at a loss to himself. 
I had shipped so many boxes at his station, he came 
to know me, and when I asked him if I coulcl pack 
my birds in his ice house, a few rods distant, he 
readily consented, and there I placed all my birds 
from Cresco for about three weeks, going down my- 
self and packing them away. After a time Mr. 
Stannard said I need not come down if I would tell 
him how to pack, and he packed all my birds after- 
wards till the first week in October, when I left 



154 CHARLES STANNARD. 

Cresco for the season. I found the birds all packed 
away under a foot of cold sawdust and resting 
squarely on the ice, breasts down, when I dug them 
out and shipped them. Of course, they were pretty 
dirty with the sawdust and the earlier birds were 
somewhat sour from laying so long, but they were 
all salable. I wanted some money on them before 
I went home, and I asked Mr. Stannard to go with 
me to the bank to make a draft against the birds, 
and he said ~c would. I visited him at his home in 
South Prairie Du Chien, where he had a handsome 
residence, secured a hundred and thirty-five dollars, 
thanked him as well as I could, for which he would 
take no remuneration, and when the birds arrived 
in New York they were sold for about one dollar 
per pair, and the draft paid. Sumner was very 
sorry because I did not send the shipment to him, 
and said the birds were worth $1.12^ if not $1.25 
per pair, as they were very much wanted and he did 
not get near enough. Mr. Stannard died several 
years ago, but I never saw him again after that 
season. 

In 1 87 1 a new crew wanted to go up the River. 
We took on the Ogdens, William Morris, John 
Barton and W. E. Bailey. They ran the boat up to 
the neighborhood of Savannah, and there in the lat- 
ter part of June they began to gather in birds. I 
had them sent to Atkinson and put in our freezer, 
which we brought from Sandusky City. About the 
first of July my family and myself joined them 
again at Savannah and we passed another summer 
up the River, or until Sept. 1st. From Prairie du 
Chien up to the neighborhood of De Soto we spent 
most of our two months. On our way we landed at 
our famous camping ground below McGregor and 
were sorry to find that the new railroad on the west 



THIRD TRIP OF THE FIREFLY, 1871. 155 

side had entirely obliterated our spring. We were 
opposite the Wisconsin River and we made up our 
minds to go there and we did so, going as far up 
as Bridgeport or a little higher. Here also was a 
long bridge across the River and the Indians were 
encamped all around it. They followed us about 
every day, begging for anything we had until one 
day we gave them a small catfish which lay in the 
bottom of our skiff, pretty well perished. They 
were pleased with it but they came no more to our 
boat, though they followed me all around the woods, 
begging my birds, for which they had no use what- 
ever, and I drove them away. We found birds not 
very plenty but found plenty of cool, flowing springs 
and we made the most of them. Then we descend- 
ed to the Mississippi again, passed up the river, 
leaving Prairie du Chien well along in the after- 
noon. A storm seemed to be coming up and we fol- 
lowed up the East side of the island opposite and 
the tempest seemed to increase and threaten. As 
it roared louder we hugged the shore till we passed 
the point beyond which for half a mile or more we 
had to cross the channel on the West side. We 
had not gone far when the rain began to come' down 
and the wind to blow with increasing force, but 
the lee of the mountain was before us, and the 
waves did not run very high to overflow us. We 
crowded on all the steam we could and just as we 
reached the embrace of the shore the thunders 
rolled over the hilltops, the waves reaching us and 
breaking against the sides of the boat and upon the 
land like the burst of desolation, and nearly engulfed 
us as we struck the shore. Barton and Collins 
jumped out, grasped the rope quickly, drew it 
around some saplings on the shore and held it taut 
till the fury of the storm had abated. If we had 



156 STORM ABOVE PRAIRIE DU CHIEN. 

been ten minutes* later getting in a total shipwreck 
would have been unavoidable. The mountain tow- 
ered up at a great height and warded off the de- 
struction which was imminent, 

WE LAND JUST BELOW DE SOTO AND HAVE 

FINE SUCCESS— BOAT GETS LOOSE 

WITH THE DOG. 

At Prairie du Chien the ferry boat was thrown 
high and dry upon the shore and much property 
went without price in this disaster of wind and rain. 
We continued our journey up past Lansing and 
were in sight of this place when I missed my dog. 
Looking about for the skiff which was usually fast- 
ened to the stern of our vessel we found that also 
was gone, and lo, and behold, on casting our eyes 
down the River we saw it had broken loose and 
was drifting downwards probably forty rods away, 
and in it sat Ponto, looking wistfully forward to 
us and surveying the gap which widened* rapidly 
between us. If he could have reached us by jump- 
ing out of the boat he would have done so. We 
turned round, overtook the skiff and took the poor 
fellow in, and there was great joy and a good laugh 
at Ponto's expense. From Lansing we passed out 
along the East side, keeping with the channel, and 
eventually reached a mile or two below De Soto, a 
short distance from the end of the timber as it 
reaches the prairie. Here the shooting was re- 
markably good. I hunted on the side of the River 
by the boat ; Barton and the other boys crossed over 
to the other. Mrs. M. was somewhat disturbed by 
the Indians, who came along every day in their 
skiffs, stopping and begging for meat, and she had 
to use all her diplomacy to keep them off the boat, 



Annoyed by the Indians. 



157 



as they were hungry thieves and would ask only for 
what they could not get otherwise. She put them 
off by telling them we were short of provisions. 
Had they known we were so far away there is no 




The Dog Loose and Lost in Sight. 



telling what they might have done, but she gave 
them no clue where we were. They were, dirty, 
vulgar and immodest, and if they were children of 



158 FAMILY RETURNS HOME. 

Nature,, they were spoiled children. One fellow 
came along in his skiff alone, sitting bolt upright 
and paddling from the rear, with only one piece 
of Covering on his person, and that a straw hat. He 
presented a very artistic pose, and Mrs. M. thought 
he would suit an artist if his picture was well fin- 
ished. 

My family now thought of returning home. It 
was near September anl the boys were unwilling 
to leave, but I promised them they could have the 
boat again after we had gone. We got off at 
Prairie du Chien, whence my family and self re- 
turned home. The last day the boys went across 
the River up where they were camped. They did 
not return till very late, not before nine o'clock 
in the evening, and they had to make their way 
slowly through the bushes and they were lost part 
of the time. When they came in they were loaded 
with birds. Barton had killed forty woodcocks and 
the rest did proportionately well. Barton was the 
banner hunter all the season. As we were coming 
down to Prairie du Chien we counted up his dues, 
out of which his expenses were to come for board- 
ing him and ammunition, and we found since he 
came on the boat the last of June he had to his 
credit two hundred and forty dollars, which I paid 
him then and there all in a lump. As Bailey was 
now able to manage the boat he took it and returned 
with the Bartons to the same ground and all did 
well. Birds were high this season and most of 
them brought $1.25 per pair, and the last went to 
Sumner. After my family got home I returned up 
the River again as far as McGregor and went on 
to Cresco. I hired a one-horse buggy with suffi- 
cient room in the back of it to hold one hundred 
pounds of ice and I began business the first day of 



PRAIRIE CHICKENS SELL At $1.00 TO $1.25. 159 

September. I went back into the country ten or 
twelve miles and I averaged over fifty chickens a 
day till I could get some hunters to help me. I 
shipped a box every three days. I repacked my ice 
when I arrived out in a big dry goods box, putting 
it in the center and underneath it a large lot of hay 
or straw, then I put on a layer of sawdust, over this 
the ice, then another layer of sawdust, and filled the 
box up with dry hay packed closely around. The 
first night I uncovered the ice from the top, except 
a thin layer of sawdust which I allowed to remain. 
Then I took the day's birds and laid them, breast 
down and drawn, on top, covering them with hay 
tightly again, putting on the lid so the flies could 
not reach the game. The second day I used what 
ice space was left in the same manner, the third I 
took the ice all out, putting the cooled birds on 
the bottom, ice on top of them and fresh birds on 
top again. By this means I had the whole mass 
cooled by the third morning when I went to town, 
killing a couple of dozen or so on the road as I 
went and knowing I could not ship until afternoon. 
I had them all packed and delivered and I was on 
my way back again by dark. When some help came 
in a few days we found chickens so plenty we in- 
creased our force to seven or eight men. The 
weather was now getting cooler and prices stirrer 
till in a few days they reached $1.25 per pair, sell- 
ing them as they run young and old by the barrel, 
dividing our birds up between Mr. Lyon and Mr. 
Sumner. Soon we crowded the market a little too 
fast and prices fell off to $1.00, and by the end of 
September to seventy-five cents, at which price we 
sold but few, packing them away in New York un- 
til prices recovered again, when we sold out. The 
fifth of October we came home. I paid up the 



160 JOHN BARTON. 

i 

hunters all that was due them, and had five hun- 
dred dollars stuffed down my bootleg, with quite 
a lot of birds yet to market. Gathering up the 
remaining woodcock from the boat we had splendid 
success all that summer. We shipped four hundred 
dozen chickens from Cresco and lost only seven 
birds, and between twenty and twenty-five hundred 
woodcock, none of which sold below a dollar. 

John Barton, who accompanied us on this trip, 
was a remarkable hunter. He was an enthusiast 
in sport and barring his vices, which wrought him 
more injury than anybody else, he was an agreeable 
companion, inclined for fun and mirth on every oc- 
casion, and no sign of laziness or weariness about 
him. He always said he did not care how hard 
he worked, just so he had "a devil of a good time 
afterward." After a hard tramp in which few 
could keep up with him he would not complain if 
his supper was not ready, not even if he had to get 
it himself. He had some fantastic names which he 
applied to men and things, and his epithets were 
often so grotesque and ludicrous that the appella- 
tions vividly remained to vex the victim or to call 
up new associations of familiar objects which gave 
you new interest in them. He felt carefully over 
the bumps of men, not by hand, but by intuition, in- 
terpreted their peculiarities, and then he named them, 
not viciously nor with any sign of a sting, but they 
were there to stay. Not one who' ever knew him 
will forget his Gil-a-lu bird, a diminutive species of 
bittern not bigger than a snipe, which rises up out 
of the marsh, dangling his legs like a jumping jack 
until he gets a good start and then throwing them 
out behind him, drops down into water or bog again. 
All the books of ornithology could not displace that 
name. It was so with men. It was so with things 



HIS PROFLIGACY. 161 

he handled, with his gun, with his dishes at table, 
with the back fields which he inspected or the 
sloughs which he crossed. He gave them all a name 
as he liked and they were not inapt nor hard to re- 
member. He was a man of large physique, he was 
built for hard labor without weariness. He took 
long strides when he was walking. His shoulders 
were bent by looking at the earth too long and too 
carefully, and he always reminded me in his swing- 
ing gait of Dr. Johnson. There was no doubt he 
had a mind of great calibre if he had chosen to use 
it before vice and passion had made inroads upon 
him, but he was now at the height of physical prow- 
ess. He seldom failed to bring down his bird under 
most unfavorable circumstances, as his count showed 
at the end of the season when he eclipsed all oth- 
ers, but in thirty days after he left the River he was a 
bankrupt and except the small amount of thirty dol- 
lars which he had become indebted for in the spring, 
and which he now paid, he had not a dollar remain- 
ing the first of November. Gambling and drinking 
did their work and did it well. In the spring follow^ 
ing he was down on the Edwards River to hunt 
snipe as usual and I was so delighted with his effi- 
ciency the past season that I went down to see him, 
but the bow so long bent was now broken. He 
could scarcely kill a snipe at all, where a greenhorn 
would have taken them easily. The snipe would 
rise in its quiet way, giving its familiar sound and 
seeming to say, " 'Tis John, 'tis John, 'tis he, 'tis 
John!" Bang would go his gun and away would 
go his bird. He was now shooting in the open 
field, the easiest of all shooting, whereas last year he 
shot through the roughest of cover where a glimpse 
of a bird many times was all you could get, and he 
was master. Now the penalties of dissipation were 



I6ii WILLIAM MORRIS, 

upon him. His muscles refused to act with that 
promptness and correctness which gave success. I 
saw no more of him after that year, but several 
boxes of woodcock came from him from Bellevue, 
Iowa, years later, and he married soon after at 
Hanover, Illinois. His wife died in 1883 an d since 
then I am told he has loitered around Galena Junc- 
tion, fishing some and hunting some, but always the 
victim of bad habits. 

Of William Morris a few words will suffice. He 
was not born tired or lazy, but while with us he 
exhibited no weariness for he did not work hard 
enough to induce it. He would forage around an 
hour or so in the morning, kill eight or ten birds, 
then retire to the boat the rest of the day perhaps to 
fish, perhaps to dream. He was a good shot and 
had long been known for his superior marksmanship. 
I do not think he cared much for money or what 
it would bring so he had a good time, and this he 
had without limit. Fishing, hunting or trapping 
suited him equally well. His shanty on the big 
slough northeast of Geneseo not far from the Dea- 
con Kemis place, was a model of a backwoodsman's 
outfit. Traps and guns and skins of furred ani- 
mals made his place outdo a second-hand store, and 
the odor that surrounded him was a mixed quantity 
between a decaying fishhead and an evaporating 
skunk skin. He was not vicious and he was liable to 
immortality from the many victims that left their 
malodorous breath behind them. He had the same ad- 
vantage in hunting as Barton had, yet he only earned 
fifty dollars while Barton earned five times that 
much. He was equally as good a shot as Barton, 
and I believe was equally good as any of the many 
sportsmen which this country has brought to notice, 
but the motive power was sadly lacking and he took 



THE OGDENS. 163 

tio trouble about it for he had a good time without 
much labor. His fish pole was always hanging- from 
the boat and many a good catch he made, and many 
a good meal he shared with us. He was ready to 
help anywhere he was needed and he was singularly 
free from all forms of vice. 

Of the remaining members of the party who ac- 
companied the boat, first and last, I will now speak. 
Billy Ogden was accounted as fine a shot as we had 
on the boat, but he resembled William Morris in 
his lack of energy and when he killed half a dozen 
or dozen birds he went back to the boat to rest or 
sleep. Many days he rolled himself up and lay in 
the sun when the shooting was fine. His brother 
Marion was the only one who could rouse him up, 
and it mattered little to him what the business in 
hand was. I think he would as soon have gambled 
with a man and got his money by unfair play, or 
thrown a railroad train from the track for plunder, 
if Marion had told him to do so, as he would 
have gone out to hunt with him, and yet his nature 
was quiet. He was not a drinker. If he indulged 
at all it was more to please somebody else than him- 
self. He seemed to have no obstructive morals. 
He was fortified with no sense of obligation. He 
thought he was a child in mental strength and he 
weighed things as a child. He had all the physical 
handicraft which a man uses and that was enough, 
and he punished a man hard who picked a quarrel 
with him. He moved to Narka, Kan., many years 
ago and was in durance vile, afterwards released, 
and at the last report was a settled barber there. 

Marion Ogden, the brother, was a man of noble 
physique and he had all the dash and daring of a 
man of the road. He never knew when he was 
whipped and if he had happened to have lived at 



164 THEIR DISSOLUTE CHARACTER. 

the time of the buccaneers on the Spanish Main, he 
would have done that cause ample justice. He was 
quite young when I first knew him and I found him 
an adept in all the artifices which men employ to 
avoid labor. In Atkinson, where he was brought 
up, he heard nothing but oaths in his father's fam- 
ily, and Tom Nowers used to say he did not under- 
stand how the Ogdens could always dress well, 
better than he, and do nothing. When he did work 
on the boat he worked hard, and he early learned 
most of the secrets which hunters successfully em- 
ploy in capturing every kind of game bird, and the 
bag which he brought in was always large and he 
did not waste much time in dawdling around and in 
sleep, but woe to that man who stirred up a fuss 
with him. He expected you to be honest with him 
but he did not court honesty himself. If you sug- 
gested fight with him for a settlement he accepted 
it readily, for he knew he was master in that kind of 
craft. He always carried his pistol, which he called 
his gun, and if he could not enforce his contentions 
one way he would do it another. He was specious 
in modes of expression, calculated to minimize and 
discharge undesirable questions. His morals, if he 
had any, were corralled with great severity. His 
vices exercised the right of eminent domain. If he 
had come into authority any time in his life he would 
have pushed in with unmitigated vigor. If he had 
been a Roman general he would have put his ene- 
mies to the sword or to the cross. He would stand 
unflinchingly before any weight of evidence until he 
was absolutely bowled down. When he left the 
River he moved to Nebraska and we commenced 
buying game there, and he furnished a large amount 
in 1877 and 1880. He was near Hastings at that 
time and the grass plover were very plenty there 



A REMARKABLE TRIO. 165 

those days. The large summer kind were particu- 
larly so, and he killed sometimes one hundred birds 
in a day in August and as high as forty chickens 
a day in October and November. Later years he 
was about Burwell, but his evil habits forbade his 
staying long in one place, and I have not heard 
from him for several years. 

ORM BROWN, IKE SEYBERT AND JOHNNY 

O'BRIEN. 

Mr. Orm Brown associated with us only one year 
on the boat, and he could not make it profitable. 
He was very popular with all the crew, and the old 
song he used to sing- so often of the 

"Three crows that sat on a tree 
And were as black as black could be," 

will always give him a place in our memory. And 
Johnny O'Brien was as fine a young man as you 
need ever to see. He was a full blooded Catholic 
and one Sunday night while we stayed at Gutten- 
berg there was a great dance going on there and 
annoyed us who were trying to sleep. In the morn- 
ing Mrs. M. remarked in his presence, not know- 
ing what his religious views were, that they must 
be all Catholics for they didn't care anything about 
Sunday. She knocked the props out from under 
Johnny at once and he was on his feet in an instant. 
"Yes, they do," he says, "they think everything of 
Sunday," and Mrs. M. only escaped a scene by say- 
ing they were probably Dutch Catholics. Johnny 
did everything on the boat we asked him and 
stayed by us till the last. He had the asthma very 
bad, and like Brown he had to go West or South- 
west to escape its terrors, and recovered from it as 
long as he was away. 



166 IKE SEYBERT A DEGENERATE. 

I have to record something of the creature who 
was commonly called Ike Seybert. He was en- 
gineer most of the time with us but I think he knew 
little or nothing of the office when he commenced. 
He was constantly screwing up the bolts on the 
engine and on the eccentrics and it cost us much 
expense to repair the breaks which he made, beside 




A Gay Bird Not on the List. 

the valuable time which went to waste. He was 
unclean and repulsive, quick to perceive and prompt 
to embrace all the seductions of sensuality. I could 
excuse him somewhat for mocking a preacher in 
his nasal twang and intonations, for the resemblance 
was almost perfect, but when I found him bringing 
a demi-monde on the boat my patience was ex- 
hausted and I walked her out and ordered him to 



R. E. BAILEY. 167 

follow. To revenge himself after getting off at 
Prairie Du Chien and accepting my note for what 
was due him to be paid on the first trip down, and 
for which I left the money when I came but which 
the note therefor was not obtainable, he afterwards 
sold the note to the Ogdens. They brought the 
same and sold it in this city, but the buyer on a 
statement of the facts refused to collect and lost 
what he had paid for it. There was nothing on the 
street too vile for him. He was last heard of in 
Ottumwa, Iowa. 

The year 1872 was one long to be remembered, 
for it was fertile with disaster. We sent R. E. 
Bailey to manage the boat which had been left over 
at North McGregor, and it was managed well 
enough, but birds seemed to have slacked up in 
numbers and prices were not so good. I had de- 
termined to put up a freezer in Cresco and through 
July and August was building it. I got it com- 
pleted before the middle of August when the chick- 
ens were ready to be put into it and I supposed I 
had ice enough to run it. They came in so fast, 
however, that I could not freeze all of them at once 
and was forced to ship when prices were low and 
the weather was very hot. I had no time to go 
into the field myself and all my receipts were pur- 
chased. When I got reports of the first shipment 
they went through in bad order, not bringing me 
one-half of what I paid for them, and I stopped 
shipping and attempted to hold them in the freezer. 
We had three rooms, and on charging them all we 
found we would not have ice enough to run them 
very long and we began to practice economy, at 
the same time taking everything that came in. Here 
was our fatal mistake. If we had limited our pur- 
chases instead of the ice we used and frozen every- 



168 CAUSE OF THE CRESCO DISASTER. 

thing we did take in down solid and kept them, 
so we should have worked through all right, but 
when the birds barely froze a little and then were 
packed together to make room for more, it softened 
the whole lot, which in time began to show decay, 
and birds when once softened cannot ever again be 
brought back as good as they were. By Septem- 
ber ist when birds were getting nearly grown we 
had several thousand young and immature birds 
which no one seemed to want in market and which 
was just opposite of what we had expected, and 
these not keeping just right left us in a precarious 
position. In this extremity I had a car of ice 
shipped in from McGregor but that did not last 
long, and now when the birds were getting large 
enough to be in demand we stopped buying. The 
20th of September I returned home, leaving every- 
thing in the hands of R. E. Bailey. It was getting 
colder and birds began to be wanted in New York. 
I had reports from Bailey about every day who 
said everything was all right. I advised him to 
ship a few boxes to see how they would sell. After 
he had started one box or two he continued ship- 
ping and no reports came to me only in a round- 
about way through his hands. In the meantime 
the whole line of railway between Cresco and New 
York was showering down new shipments upon 
that devoted city, where after the dealers had re- 
ceived one box they refused to take more, and most 
of them were partly lost or entirely so, and the 
freight and express bills were returned to me to 
pay, for which I forwarded over one hundred dol- 
lars and did not receive a cent value therefor. I 
stopped Bailey's shipping as soon as I could tel- 
egraph. In the meantime he continued writing me 
the birds were all right. I ordered him to send me 



R. E. BAILEY MANAGES BADLY. 169 

a box by express to Kewanee so I could see what 
they were, and on receiving the same, notified him 
that they were all worthless, dismissed him from 
my service and put further operations in the hands 
of a colored man who seemed to show a great deal 
of aptness for taking care of the house. Mr. Bailey 
came home a few days afterwards and I showed 
him the birds were spoiled, being sticky and soft. 
He said he was sick soon after I left and had not 
been able to attend to the business as he liked, 
putting the job in the hands of the colored man 
before mentioned. 

SHIPS THE FREEZING PLANT AT CRESCO TO 

KEWANEE. 

In time I had the freezer emptied of all the birds 
it contained out on the prairie, gave a man forty 
dollars the following year to tear out the piping 
of the freezer, load it and send it to me, and the 
banker where I did business sold the building for 
me. When the car arrived Mr. Kerr, who was 
agent here, reported that there was a carload of 
stuff at the railroad billed to me which he said 
looked to him like old iron, and asking me about it, 
said he did not believe I had ordered it, that it did 
not look to him to be worth the freight. However, 
I unloaded it, and that metal was in a large meas- 
ure the material which entered in to make our 
future freezer, for all further business twenty years 
afterwards. Much of this damage came from the 
hunters carrying out with them insufficient ice, but 
more from laying down their birds in the field when 
they got a little heavy, where the flies stung them. 
When I shot all the birds myself, or at least ex- 
amined them every night as they came in and 



170 TRY FROZEN GROUSE AT CRESCO IN 1873. 

packed them, I kept them in perfect condition, but 
they came in often at night when I could not tell 
exactly what state they were in, and here the loss 
largely occurred. I never went back to Iowa but 
once, and that was the year 1873, the year of the 
panic. This year also prices were low, but I bought 
low and examined thoroughly what I bought and 
had them well frozen, for I had plenty of ice now, 
and in the Fall freighted them to Atkinson, and 
while such birds would not now bring full prices 
on account of the trouble the dealers had had with 
my former birds I got through fairly well without 
loss. The Fall I left the freezer in charge of Bailey 
there were a great many chickens offered me in 
Atkinson after I returned and I packed them there ; 
finer birds you could seldom see and full grown, 
and it was with much difficulty that I could get 
purchasers to take hold of them, from the belief 
that they were not equally good with unfrozen 
stock, which opinion in future years I had the 
satisfaction of seeing so thoroughly disproved that 
I was able to sell any quantity of frozen birds at 
the highest figures and the dealers waiting, ready 
for the goods whenever I had them packed. 

I will now record the last trip I had with the 
Firefly in 1873, which also was the last year I car- 
ried the gun there or elsewhere. This was the 
same year we went to Cresco as already narrated. 
Something of the novelty of such expeditions hael 
already worn off, and most all of the main hunters 
had had their turn at it and retired. There still 
remained one man, E. Gladhill of Erie who was a 
noted shot and wanted to run the boat this year. 
Some were booked to come on later, but on the first 
of July I boarded the boat with him at Lansing, 
Iowa, and we started up the River, for two men 



BOSS LAST TRIP OF FIREFLY IN 1873, 171 

could now handle the boat alone. We took a dif- 
ferent route from what we had taken before. We 
followed up on the West side where there was no 
channel for big boats but the heavy rains had 
raised the water nearly all over the islands north 
of us, and there was a little secondary channel 
where a large body of water flowed close to the 
shore, partly obstructed by bending willows which 
we had to throw open as we passed them ; in time 
reaching smoother waters and a stream that seemed 
to flow both ways, up which wc followed in the 
direction we thought we ought to go. Sometimes 
we were rushed up hill apparently, and sometimes 
downhill, passing open farm land on our right and 
at last reaching a point where the water seemed to 
come all from the hills on the West and in the direc- 
tion of the Little Iowa River which we thought till 
now we had got into. In the course of a mile or so 
we came out into the open again, finding a big flat 
of meadow land to our left, and still further the 
railroad track in sight above the lowland which 
was entirely covered by water. It was deep enough 
now so we ran over the bank of the channel and 
floated in the open field without touching bottom. 
I had never been here before and I remarked to 
Gladhill that the country which we were approach- 
ing was the finest sight I ever beheld, prospectively 
at least, for woodcock. We moved on up towards 
the railroad track and when we had gotten with 
twenty or twenty-five rods of the shore we struck 
bottom and there being a cottonwood there which 
stood up out of the water we tied up to it. We 
were then thirty or forty rods from the river up 
which we came and which passed under the rail- 
road track ahead of us a little to the Northwest. 
The water was knee deep and we waded ashore. 



172 REMARKABLE WOODCOCK COUNTRY. 

We took no guns with us as we intended not to 
hunt till next day. However, we went up and ex- 
amined the ground along the river bed, pulled 
away the bushes and were delighted to find every 
evidence of a large amount of birds there. The 
soil was honeycombed with the fair dwellers and 
we saw increased evidence of their immediate 
presence. Next morning we started in, after run- 
ning our boat back into the channel and bringing it 
up near the railroad bridge, and first we ran over 
the small island immediately under the bridge, to 
the right as you go upstream, not over three or four 




Railroad Bridge Over Little Iowa and Bogotts Bluff. 



GREATEST BANNER DAY EVER RECORDED. 173 

rods long or broad, and on this we raised fourteen 
brids, thirteen of which we took in, one escaping 
across the stream. Then we followed up above the 
bridge on a low wet muddy bottom with very little 
cover except large maple trees, and here shooting 
a few birds Gladhill said that as it was now near 
noon he would go back to the boat and get some 
ammunition as he was likely to run out. I waited 
for him to do so and he was gone over an hour. I 
waited so long that he might have equal chance with 
myself. I was fortunate in the morning in taking 
a supply of over one hundred shells, more than dou- 
ble what I usually take, which we put in the skiff 
and took up the stream with us. I had my breech 
loader, Gladhill had a muzzle loader. He remained 
away so long I was getting quite uneasy when at 
last he came and explained that he had stopped in 
the boat to cook his dinner. We started in again. 
It must have been nearly noon. The next island, 
which was a long one with high, dry land in the 
center, by going around the shore of it, the entire 
distance we secured forty birds. Then we followed 
up the shores on each side of the stream, finding 
and killing a great many until finally we struck a 
moderate sized island which seemed to have birds 
all over it. By this time my cartridges were run- 
ning low and my companion said the same. The 
sun was then at least one hour and a half high. We 
fired our last shots, gathered up our birds all around 
where we had left them, and then jumping in our 
skiff returned to the boat. We had a large basket 
measuring over a bushel which we filled heaping 
full. After counting the birds, which numbered 171, 
79 were for Gladhill and 92 for myself. Next morn- 
ing we returned where we had left off the pre- 
vious day and shot forty birds more. We stayed 



174 EIGHT HUNDRED BIRDS IN SEVEN DAYS. 

on this river about six or seven days, in which 
time we killed eight hundred birds, and we decided 
when we left that there were about a hundred birds 
remaining. We ran our game down to Lansing and 
shipped it all to Kewanee, where they were frozen 
and sold later for $1.25 per pair for the best look- 
ing. The rough birds sold as low as seventy-five. 
All of them would have brought the top figure if 
we had known how to renovate them as we did 
learn afterwards. This is, I believe, the largest 
number of woodcocks ever killed by two men in one 
day. If we had had a little more ammunition it 
would have been easy to have killed two hundred 
birds before sundown. Frank Forrester says in 
1850 or thereabouts himself and another man killed 
over one hundred birds in Orange County, New< 
York, on the Drowned Lands in one day, which is 
far less than the number we took in. I left the 
Firefly at this time, but the boys run it about two 
years more. 

Before going I had quite a catastrophe near 
where the boat was tied up. In the picture you 
will see a house and some outbuildings on the right 
under the trees. Most of the trees between the 
house and our boat are now cut off and you could 
not then see that house. I went over there every day 
or two to get some milk and I felt quite at home. 
They were pleasant people and they showed me 
every courtesy. The night following our last hunt 
I went over there as usual. Ponto followed me 
along entirely of his own free will, and as I reached 
the house there was a cat sitting in the doorway, 
which however I did not notice. The dog was 
coming up, and the cat seeing him as I opened the 
door, slipped in the door beside me. I closed the 
door, the woman halloed out, "Scat there," and 



A CATASTROPHE. 



175 




176 A CAT-ASTROPHE. 

started to drive her out. The floor was nicely 
polished and a little declining and as she made a 
spring toward me and the door her feet slipped and 
she came down square on her "spankers." There 
was a flutter of skirts and white robes only for an 
instant, when she was on her feet again and the 
wrath of Pelee shot out from her countenance. Pur- 
ple lines stole down the roadway of the eyes and 
lodged in the corners of her mouth. The melo- 
drama commenced. Just a little to the right as I 
entered there was a wooden bench used to hold 
the water pail and sometimes do the family wash- 
ing, and above it the window. The cat, frightened 
at the confusion, started for the window and the 
woman a close second, and in its haste the cat land- 
ed first on the bench, on which was spread three or 
four sheets of fly paper. It stopped there and the 
consternation that cat expressed was beyond all 
computation. At first she swung her tail in whip 
fashion, like the drivers play their horses on our 
beer wagons, only there was no perceptible snap. 
Then she looked to her feet and tried to .raise one 
after the other, and the whole sheet of sticky sub- 
stance came up with it and the hind foot trod on 
this filmy, viscous blanket and she fell back again, 
the picture of unutterable despair, when she was 
ready now to capitulate. The woman seized the 
unoffending cat with all the additions her feet had 
clinging to her, took her to the wash tub, wrought 
over her until she could walk alone, threw her down 
outside and told her, "Now stay there !" I was too 
full of laugh to entirely keep quiet, but had to 
check myself for fear I should be treated the same 
way as the cat. I shall never forget what a "great 
matter a little fire kindleth." 



"FRESH FISH HEAR." 177 

Since the railroads came in on both sides of the 
river it gave distant hunters a chance to come in 
and hunt the best ground and compete with us. 
We sold the boat to a man in New Albin, a mile 
or two from where we killed our birds, and this 
boat was used one or two seasons as a ferry between 
that place and Bad Axe, now Genoa, just across 
the river. Taking the boat from first to last there 
was not very much profit in it, but the family with 
some reservations enjoyed it ven much and their 
two seasons outing in this manner will not soon be 
forgotten. There was much to see along the shore, 
many curiosities to pick up, the finest springs every- 
where, and the fishing was always good. We ob- 
served, as we came down, one sign at Lansing fas- 
tened to the railroad bridge, which read, "Fresh 
fish hear." We were always solicitous to know 
whether the fish heard or not, for there was a mar- 
ket her} and fish were in great demand, and 1 im- 
agined some time large schools would be heading 
that way and the net would break, as it did in 
Galilee. There was one point below Dubuque at 
which we caught more black bass than we could 
use. More than a dozen would rush for the bait 
as soon as it reached the water, and hundreds of 
them could be seen lying near the bottom and 
preying on the small minnows that swam around 
the point. 

Catfish were caught at any time, and sometimes 
pickerel in the back waters. One of the sights was 
when Mrs. M. attempted to pull in a large catfish 
and it was doubtful awhile whether the fish would 
not pull her in. However, she landed a whopper. 

In 1873 om actual labors in the field, by wood 
and stream, ended. We had carried a gun for 
fifteen years and we now laid it down, never desir- 



178 GAME BUSINESS IN HENRY CO. FALLS OFF. 




Mrs. M. Pulls in a Whopper Catfish. 



ing- to take it up again. We had in that time seen 
the finest flocks that ever inspired a hunter, pass 
out of existence. Henry County was practically de- 
nuded of game. The States west of the Mississippi 
River were no better off, but beyond the Missouri 
lay a great country full of every description of 
birds we had here except woodcocks and partridges, 
and these were found only in the lands further north, 
beginning in Wisconsin and running through Min- 
nesota and Montana and the Dakotas, and here we 
turned our attention for twenty years more until 
1893. 

In 1880 my son C. M. Merritt went westward to 
Nebraska and other states to supply what we lacked 
in our own state. Chicken and quail were the prin- 
cipal game there, except in the Spring when dow 
birds and grass plover and some jack snipe were to 



TRADE IN THE WEST BEGINS. 179 

be had, and a few golden plover. Some of our Coun- 
ty hunters had already gone there, among them the 
Ogdens, and we opened trade about Hastings. In 
August the grass plover were fat and large and in 
great demand. A good hunter could kill from fifty 
to a hundred birds a day in the corn field. In a 
short time we gathered up there some four or five 
thousand birds at a uniform cost of ten cents each 
on the ground. The first birds were rather light, 
but the demand was so urgent they easily brought 
three fifty per dozen in New York. The latter part 
of August they became very fat, and finally sold for 
$4.50 per dozen for the best birds. A good many of 
the same kind came in here and were equally fat and 
salable. What we did not immediately sell we froze 
up, and although our house did not do its work as 
well as it should at that time we sold none of them 
below four dollars. In the winter we bought large 
quantities of grouse and quail, and from one town 
there was shipped over ten thousand chickens in the 
first fall and winter we were there. In the Spring 
we went back as we heard there was a species of 
game called daw birds, and these with grass plover, 
which at that time sold well, made us a good busi- 
ness. Up to this time dow birds had never been 
very much seen in the New York market. They 
had been killed in Boston Bay and old dealers re- 
membered the time when they were there plenty. 
In this state we had frequently killed them in the 
spring and packed them separate on account of their 
large size and fatness, but they never brought more 
than golden plover, so we put them all together af- 
terwards. The first birds we received from Ne- 
braska we marketed at $2.25 per dozen. As their 
values became known and buyers found that they 
were to be had they advanced in a year to $3.50 and 



180 



DOW BIRDS OF NEBRASKA. 




Dow Bird 

$4.00 and a few years later to $5.00 and even $6.00, 
at which price we sold a good many barrels. We 
bought grass plover at nearly the same price, but 
receipts began to increase so fast in a short time 
beyond the demands of the market that they de- 
clined to about seventy-five cents per dozen, and 
even sixty cents. Thousands of them were to be 
had at any price a buyer might give. The most we 
could ever get for these spring birds was two dol- 
lars and this occurred only once in two or three 
years. 

As there were few golden plover in Nebraska and 
the flocks had mostly removed from Henry County 
by the drainage and plowing of the bottom lands 
where they fed, by 1875, we learned from some hun- 
ters that had moved to Minnesota that they were 
there quite plenty the first week in May. We went 
there, and in the neighborhood of Luverne and 
Southward to West Bend, Iowa, and there found 
them as we were told. They were now in very 
active demand and sold from two to three dollars 
per dozen. One year they were so plenty that they 



GOLDEN PLOVER IN MINNESOTA. 181 

filled all the markets east and west at the low price 
of $1.25 to $1.50 per dozen. This was about 1880 
and large quantities were frozen. By the latter part 
of the summer they were sold out and the quantity 
was never so great again. We held ours till the 
following spring when they sold for three dollars. 
These birds have since larg-ely left that country. 
They move toward the Northeast about the second 
week in May and whither they go it is not known, 
but Frank Forester says that they go to Cape 
Breton where they breed. It is probobly that they 
have done so, and may do so yet, but we have not 
heard of any receipts from that country. Some day 
some industrious sport will follow them up to their 
destination as they certainly have not been destroyed 
and always will be in demand. 

SUMMER GRASS PLOVER NOT PLENTY IN NE- 
BRASKA. 

We were not able to get many summer grass 
plover in Nebraska after the first year, and not 
many afterwards in this county. We think the 
slaughter of these birds in April is largely responsi- 
ble for their scarcity in summer. They all leave the 
West by the first of September. In November of 
that year when they were so plenty we followed 
them to Texas and had almost overtaken them, when 
a freeze coming on they passed into Mexico, where 
they winter. The spring birds were hunted with 
such severity and with the capture so easily of many 
thousand dozen in the course of thirty days, and 
with pi ices so ridicuously low, we gave up packing 
them in 1892. They ought to increase now when 
hunting them has ceased, if the laws of the State 
protect them, as we think they do. The same is true 
of dow birds, which have now become very scarce, 
covering as they do, only a small scope of country 



182 GROUSE OF NEBRASKA. 

in Nebraska and Indian Territory ; if they can be 
shipped they will soon be hunted to death. Golden 
plover were never plenty west of the Missouri, and 
almost always of a poor quality. But few snipe were 
in the State, and grouse and quail the only game of 
note. Nebraska has, I think, the finest quail of any 
state, even better than Kansas or Missouri, and the 
grouse are unexcelled. Iowa and Illinois have no 
better. Kansas has two kinds of grouse, one very 
small and not much in vogue. Besides they have 
the common grouse which are excellent. Quail are 
always plenty beyond the Missouri, in Kansas, Ok- 
lahoma and Indian Territory, and from the latter 
the largest supplies have come of late years. There 
is no reliable estimate of the numbers that have been 
there killed. Much of the time the laws in these 
Western States have been entirely ignored, but the 
pendulum has now swung backwards and it seems 
probable that the shipping of all kinds will be out- 
lawed, and the result already has been that game has 
largely been withdrawn from the tables of the 
wealthy, and hotels and restaurants do not call for 
it in the cities where it was once so plenty. It is 
certain that with the population rapidly increasing it 
could not long remain a standard article of diet, 
somewhere it must give way, and it seems likely 
that this is a good occasion for looking around and 
noting where we stand. Snipe and woodcock are 
also rapidly decreasing and though the laws may 
check them for a while, their destruction is immi- 
nent in the near future. Ducks seem to follow the 
rest. Fifteen years ago the Mississippi was full of 
mallards in November and December about New 
Boston. We packed 150 barrels in thirty days from 
Keithsburg and New Boston alone, and after this 
flight we had lessening numbers very fast in the 



DECLINE OF DUCKS. 183 

following- years. Up to that time teal were abun- 
dant, blue wings in particular came in early, in 
October around Annawan, where there were shallow 
ponds and feed plenty. Wagon loads of them were 
taken out there in thirty days, of the very best 
quality. We distinctly remember getting in seven 
or eight barrels at a time within three or four days 
which sold in Xew York at seventy-five cents per 
pair, the highest price we ever were able to reach, 
and strange as it may seem, when they were most 
plenty. Such birds would not bring over fifty or 
possibly sixty cents in New York for the last few 
years. 

DESTRUCTION OF PIGEONS. 

Pigeons can hardly be called game, yet in our 
first few years in the West we bought large quanti- 
ties, mostly from St. Louis. At that time W. W. 
Judy was the ruling game dealer in that city. We 
first became acquainted with him when we were re- 
turning the Firefly from the South in 1870. While 
stopping in the city we inquired for some particulars 
about the River, and were referred to him as an ex- 
pert in all river matters. That was the only time I 
ever saw him, but he impressed me very much as 
a man to make a friend of. He was very courteous, 
genial and more than ready to assist me in every 
thing I asked for. Later my son made his acquaint- 
ance and we bought many thousand dollars worth 
of game of him. Pigeons were his specialty, and we 
commenced to take them at seventy-five cents per 
dozen. After taking a few hundred dozen he re- 
duced his price to fifty cents on track, and we bought 
a good carload of him at that price. They came to 
us in sacks of fifty to seventy-five each and we froze 
them all up in about the vear 1881. We marketed 



184 SLAUGHTER OF PIGEONS IN MISSOURI. 

them in the spring following, and although they 
were not active, they sold for one dollar to one 
twenty-five per dozen, a few at $1.50, and we 
cleared fifteen hundred dollars on the lot. Later 
Mr. Judy died, and we bought of his successor stall 
fed birds which were trapped and fed and fattened 
and then killed for market, when they easily com- 
mand $2.50 to $3.00 per dozen. Some of these birds 
we kept two or three years. The last barrel we 
marketed in Boston at full price. These birds were 
marketed so closely and destroyed so ruthlessly, that 
we believe that these were the last stall fed birds 
that were ever marketed, and pigeons themselves 
are now only a remembrance. In i860 to 1865 they 
were plenty in Illinois, vast droves of them appear- 
ing in the woods in fall and spring and often taking 
to the wheat fields in September, where they were 
easily captured. Their meat in its wild state was 
dark colored, of coarse texture and not urgently 
wanted, but when well fattened they were very 
much like tame squabs which now take their place. 
At the time we commenced hunting- woodcocks on 
the Mississippi, the pigeons flew so thick and fast in 
June, that you could shoot them by the hundreds 
without moving a step, but to market them required 
they should be packed in ice and expressed, and 
when this was done, there was very little left out 
of one dollar per dozen, at which price they could 
be sold. On one occasion while shooting along near 
the mouth of the Maquoketa, I carried my dinner 
with me in my game sack, and about noon was 
getting hungry, and sat on a log to eat, when I 
found my meat had all spoiled. It was a terrible hot 
day and I could not work much longer, when on 
looking up on a tree over my head, I discovered a 
lone cock pigeon sitting on a dry limb. I soon 



ANNAWAN TRADE. JOHN LYLE. 185 

brought him down, and kindling a fire made a very 
eomfortable dinner and was able to go on with my 
hunt till nightfall. 

About 1880, after we had opened up in the West 
we abandoned the Joles country and took the Anna- 
wan trade, which was large for many years, instead. 
With the exception of prairie chickens and wood- 
cock all kinds of prairie birds there abounded and 
continued so until about 1890. Most of the trade 
was in the months beginning with and following 
September and continued till the January after. In 
September we had the first young prairie chicken 
and as the middle of October was reached the cluck 
shooting was excellent. At this time we went regu- 
larly to the Caugheys four or five miles North of 
Annawan where the hunters worked regularly and 
brought in their game and exchanged it for cash 
and ammunition. Blue wing teal were quite plenty 
and mallards increased as the month of October 
waned and they began to put on their winter coat. 
At this time, besides Caughey and Hiserodt, Fronk, 
Jim Smith, the Mapes Brothers and as many strag- 
gling hunters that came along, with considerable re- 
ceipts from Charlie Clemens, we gathered up a good 
load of valuable birds every trip till the ice drove 
the clucks out, when the trade and the season closed. 
Hiserodt kept record for that time and his accurate 
sales for his own shooting were over four hundred 
dollars. 

At this time we frequently met our townsman 
Uncle Johnny Lyle either coming or going to Anna- 
wan or both. Many times he rode with us. On several 
occasions he had a farm wagon, loaded with barrels 
of flour. One day he told me that White, the Miller, 
owed him a good bit of money which he could get 
only partially by payment in flour, and that every 



186 JOHN LYLE. 

load he took away cost him a hundred dollars a bar- 
rel. After awhile I saw him in town while I was 
looking over a load of birds and he said to me, "I 
think you have traded long enough and made enough 
to retire and take it easy." I retorted that when I 
got so I could sell my birds for a hundred dollars 
a barrel I was going to quit like White did. It 
was only a little while after that I sold very many 
barrels at over 3 hundred dollars, each, six of them 
going at one time for nineteen hundred net. Uncle 
John, as we called him, was always very free to loan 
you money if you needed it, but when you paid him 
he always exacted compound. He was a keen judge 
of character and seldom read unwisely. 

Prairie chickens have not been plenty in this state 
since 1870. In Nebraska they were plenty till after 
1880, when the rush of hunters from Illinois re- 
duced their numbers. At that time we got most of 
our supplies from Nebraska. In ten years more the 
same fate befell the western birds as our own. If 
immigration had continued into the state as it did 
into the states adjoining, the end would have come 
sooner, but Nebraska has now a smaller population 
than it had ten years ago. As a consequence more 
prairies remain unbroken, and where prairie fires are 
kept out many flocks are raised yearly. When Ne- 
braska and Minnesota and the Dakotas all come 
under the plow all the laws that can be made will be 
impossible to save them. In this state they are con- 
fined to low swampy lands lately redeemed from the 
water, where there is abundant cover for their nests, 
but when heavy rains fall the young are all lost. 
The oldest inhabitants will remember the time when 
the flocks in this state were numbered by the hun- 
dreds, and very many contained one hundred to a 
thousand birds. I have seen more birds fly up in 



PLENTIFUL P. CHICKENS IN i860. 187 

one field at one time in October, than are now living 
within the limits of this state, and in one instance in 
Stark County on a cold day in early winter I have 
seen acres covered with the birds, as thickly as they 
could sit. Along low valleys like the Edwards River 
the birds would gather at the approach of snows in 
such quantities, that they covered ground for a dis- 
tance of a mile in length, and in 1861, north of Mt. 
Pleasant, some fifteen or twenty miles, I have seen 
the fences at the first fall of snow covered with 
chickens for a whole mile in a straight line without 
a break. In this country when snow fell, after feed- 
ing on the fields in the morning, they took to the 
high wood covered hills by the thousand, where they 
remained till later in the day, when they flew into 
the corn fields again. In the day time in Iowa, be- 
fore the fences were so plenty, they gathered in the 
grass in long ridges on the prairie, and from ten 
o'clock, when they began to set for the dog, in sun- 
shiny days they remained till four o'clock, when 
the whole mass would raise and fly to the corn fields 
to feed. These ridges made excellent sport. I have 
killed as high as forty a day in the country North- 
west of Ainsworth, in Iowa, the first of December. 
Before snows came grouse were in excellent demand 
at sixty-five cents per pair, but they had to be trans- 
ported by express so that it is not probable they 
cleared us much over two dollars per dozen. Board 
was cheap, but ammunition was very dear. Lead 
rose rapidly in the markets when the Civil Wai 
came on. Shot was $5.50 per sack, and powder 
$8.00 and upward per keg. So long as the snows 
held off we did well enough. By earlier rising and 
watching the flocks as they came from their roost 
in the morning, we got a fairly good idea where 
they were in the day time. They would go back 



188 PRAIRIE CHICKENS IN IOWA. 

anywhere from half a mile to a mile and a half, 
where the prairie grass was the tallest and thickest, 
and in places where young shoots grow up and in- 
terlaced the stalks of grass the covering was very 
thick. The birds lay close, and you had a picnic. 
There was no use looking for them much before ten 
o'clock. If you did they would rise en masse and 
move away to* some neighboring ridge. After the 
sun shone warm they would begin to scatter out, 
each bird by itself, when they would rise singly and 
give you a good shot. One day I marked the direc- 
tion of the flock and I found them scattered out 
over the entire length of the ridge, and I followed 
it till feeding time. I lost a good many crippled 
birds, but the time for looking up was too valuable 
for that purpose, and where they fell among the corn 
stalks the hawks found them and ate them up before 
morning ; but we bagged forty birds. 

When the snow at last fell the sight of the moving 
flocks was like that of the mallards in the Fall, 
streaming along over the grain fields, not unusually 
half a mile in length, but they were very wary on 
the fence, or wherever they alighted. The young 
man with whose father I stopped had heard of a 
trap with double lids which fell in as the bird 
touched the trigger and jumped upon it, trying to 
reach an ear of corn overhead, and after finding that 
they worked well, he built a large number and put 
them out in his garden close by, and was able in one 
week to catch over five hundred, which we bought 
At that time trapped birds would outsell those that 
were shot, but this fancy did not last long because 
trapping birds destroyed them so rapidly, the laws 
were enforced and shooting became the only mode 
of capture. After this so many were marketed that 
the price went down to thirty cents per pair in New 
York in the early Spring. 



Charles davenport. 189 

In 1857 we killed our first chickens in Henry 
County. We returned from the East in September, 
bringing a man to hunt with us. We went four or 
five miles East of Kewanee, and we did not do well 
and the price was only seventy-five cents. By the 
time cold weather set in, my partner threw up the 
sponge and returned to his native land, and I im- 
mediately made the acquaintance of the Emerys in 
the Kemerling country, northwest from Kewanee a 
few miles. Hull, the young man of the family, was 
a good shot, and remained on the old place till his 
father died, and the son-in-law, John Davis, of 
Davis Bros., moved away. Part of the time I shot 
northeast of town, walking two or three miles each 
morning, and the snow was heavy and the air very 
cold. We had no rubber boots at that time, and I 
often had to pound my feet on the hard ground a 
half hour or more, before they became comfortable. 
I shipped occasionally a barrel and for a wonder, 
prices all through January were very good. Prairie 
chickens brought one dollar per pair readily, and 
quails three dollars. At that price I could make five 
dollars a day, for I could average two dozen quails 
beside a few chickens, most every day on my way 
home, which had plunged under the snow for the 
night, and rising up close by you could scarcely 
miss them. The Express office at that time was in 
the old Lyman building, corner of Second and Main 
St., and the Express agent was Charles Davenport. 
After awhile he wanted to buy my birds, and as he 
offered to give me as much as I could get for them 
in New York, I sold them. It was the time of wild- 
cat money, which, however, he did not offer me, and 
I received my pay all in gold. It was a very profitable 
venture for him, so much so he took a number of 
hunters late in the winter to Iowa, and on his return 



i90 MAPES BROTHERS. 

he gave us such flattering reports that we went there 
the next year. Davenport remained in Kewanee 
only one year, when Jerry Hopkins started the store 
and H. C. Parker became Express Agent. Jerry 
himself sometimes bought a few birds, and as he 
kept ammunition his place became a rendezvous for 
all the hunters. At this time Hull Emery and his 
brother-in-law John Davis were there all together 
one forenoon, and it was very cold and the stove 
was red hot. John says to< Jerry, "Put me up a 
pound of powder." Jerry did so and handing it to 
John he shoved it in the back pocket of his coat, 
and swung around like all men do with his back 
to the fire, never once thinking of his powder. His 
coat brushed against the stove and set it on fire, and 
the smoke rising, I saw that an explosion was immi- 
nent and I sung out a warning, which was very 
timely, as otherwise it would have destroyed his coat 
and given us a funeral. 

While woodcock shooting was good, we did not 
kill many chickens in summer, but left them for 
Fall. But in 1865, as we have said, the shooting 
was so poor around Savannah and up the River, 
we persuaded the Mapes Brothers to come to Sabula 
opposite Savannah and hunt prairie chickens. They 
went out about ten or twelve miles in the country 
where they found them quite plenty, and in the 
course of ten days brought us in about five hundred 
. of them. As I could not find enough boxes to pack 
them in, I went across the River to Savannah, and 
there at the saw mill had a supply of thin boards 
sawed out to line boxes with, put them in the 
River and towed them down to Sabula, going along 
with a skiff to guide them. There I put up the 
boxes double, filled them in between with sawdust, 
and shipped them next day. They arrived in fair 



PRICES FROM 1856 TO 1895. 191 

order and sold to A. & E. Robbins for seventy cents 
per pair and no commission. Afterwards I went out 
on the same ground and hunted a week and came 
in with my load late in the afternoon, tired and 
hungry. I ran into a baker shop at Sabula to get 
a lunch. I noticed the flies were very thick there 
and one or two* opened up in the piece of pie I ate. 
However, I swallowed it and went on to Savannah. 
After dark I was seized with terrible cramps and 
pains and I thought it was over with me, as it would 
have been, if I had not got relief soon. Christian 
Science had not then been known or I should have 
been inclined to call it an illusion. I bore it as 
patiently as I could and in the course of two hours 
I got better, and resumed my usual work next day. 
I found the baker was using cobalt to kill the flies, 
not expecting to kill me or his patrons. 

It is interesting here to note the prices which 
game brought from 1856 till 1895, a period of thirty- 
nine years. The first year prairie chickens sold for 
one dollar per pair throughout the season, but trade 
did not commence till late and did not last long. 
Next year they sold from seventy-five to a dollar. 
IN 1 859- 1 860 seventy-five to eighty-five cents. In 
the first years of the war they sold down to twenty- 
five and thirty cents, with an occasional raise to sixty 
or sixty-five cents, when stocks ran low. After 1864 
they held to a more steady price, generally from 
eighty-eight to $1.25, but in 1865 they reached 
$1.50 and after that for many seasons they ran from 
$1.12 1-2 to $1.25, from October till the last of 
December. After the general rise of prices and the 
depreciation of government money was over, and 
during the 70's, the lowest prices would be in De- 
cember, when supplies were the largest, but seldom 
went down to sixty cents again. In these early days 



192 H. L. LAWRENCE OF BOSTON. 

sales were legal till March 1st, and dealers began to 
put away birds whenever the prices declined in 
December. Somewhere about 1880 or probably a 
little earlier the season was shortened to February 
1st, but the growing scarcity held them during the 
holidays at about one dollar, and then till February 
about $1.25, but the law was not observed with any 
nicety and the birds sold any time till warm weather, 
but were not exposed publicly on the market. In 
Boston it was legal to sell birds till May 1st. Prob- 
ably more birds were sold in this time at one dollar 
than at any higher price. After the early 8o's and 
freezing began, dealers laid away their birds in De- 
cember and January and brought them out in the 
month following. With exceptions of one or two 
years grouse hardened in price till 1895, when they 
reached the highest point ever before known. Sum- 
mer birds brought extreme prices. Birds did not 
have to wait for a market and so were not laid away. 
There were as many buyers as there were sellers. 
Our receipts were fairly good and we sold all on 
orders as they arrived. When we got an accumula- 
tion of three or four barrels we were anxious to 
dispose of them. I would get an inquiry from New 
York and also from Boston every two or three days 
and sometimes daily. In that case I had to express, 
which would cost me double the price of freight. I 
had three or four barrels on hand and I concluded 
I would ship them to Lawrence and take my chances 
of getting an order before they arrived. I thought if 
I did not I would telegraph at the end of the line 
to hold them for me and not deliver them. I 
shipped them and when they were two days on the 
road Lawrence wanted that number of barrels. I 
sold them with no specifications how they should ar- 
rive, or the exact time, but they were supposed to 



LAWRENCE OBJECTS TO RUSE. 193 

arrive prompt. Two days after they were delivered 
to him on the same time they would have arrived, 
if I had sent them by express. He kicked pretty 
hard, because he saw the ruse of shipping them to 
him and selling them to him before he got them, 
but there was no recourse. I often did this with 
commission men, who were not my regular con- 
signees. They would invariably quote me prices 
which were higher than the market, when they had 
none of mine to sell and wanted to get some. 

THE PHILADELPHIA MAN WANTS EGGS, BUT 

NOT THAT WAY. KNAPP & VAN NOSTRAND 

OF NEW YORK MAKE A BAD GUESS. 

I waylaid a man that way in Philadelphia on eggs. 
Before he wrote me the price of eggs and about the 
time that I thought a letter was due, I shipped him 
several barrels of eggs by freight, without giving 
him any notice. Then his letter of advice reached 
us in a day or two, that prices had advanced several 
cents per dozen, and by the time his letter reached 
me the goods came to his hand, and he promptly 
returned me twenty-five cents per dozen for the 
whole lot without discount of any kind, and evi- 
dently much more than they were worth. I sent a 
barrel of dow birds to Knapp & Van Nostrand and 
they claimed they were too long kept for the price 
(merely a smart guess) and asked what disposition 
they should make of them. I ordered them turned 
over to another dealer, who was well pleased with 
them who gave me fifty cents a dozen more than I 
had billed them to the first parties. 

I will at this time relate a deal I had with H. A. 
Sumner, who was really Edward Sumner, but 
through some misfortune was compelled to operate 



194 A DEAL WITH tt. A. SUMNER. 

through his wife's name. He ordered a barrel of 
snipe in the spring. I shipped them to him at a set 
price and at the same time a barrel to John A. Lyon, 
commission man. On receipt of them Sumner re- 
ported that the barrel was spoilt. In a day or two 
I got sale from the commission man which was at 
full values and no complaint. I reported the fact to 
Sumner. A few days later he reported that he might 
be mistaken and he would let me know when he saw 
what he could do. Thirty days later he returned 
me the full price as they were billed. 

I had two instances of similar character, one with 
N. Durham and one with Edson Brothers, the de- 
tails of which in the latter case were too offensive 
to publish. In either case I regarded it as a steal 
downright and simple, the facts of which I do not 
state expecting them to repay me. I have but one 

A BAD DEAL WITH N. DURHAM. A WORSE ONE 

WITH EDSON BROS., N. Y. MISTAKEN 

IDENTITY OF A. & M. ROBBINS. 

more complaint and this is not with A. & E. Rob- 
bins, but with A. M. Robbins, their successors. 
These gentlemen were heavy dealers, like all their 
fathers were. They always insist upon the choicest 
stock and I always gave them the best in the market. 
They asked it as a special favor that when I had 
something fine I should let them know, and when 
I sent them they received them acceptably. After 
the death of the old firm they in repeated instances 
ordered snipe and plover and teal duck, and when 
they were delivered to them, all of them being 
select birds or intended to be so, they would report 
they were not satisfactory, and asking for the man- 
ner of disposal. One day they ordered a barrel of 



feEFORE FREEZERS WERE IN COMMON USE. 195 

teal duck. They were refused and returned. It was 
a very cold time in winter and came back by freight. 
I immediately unpacked them from the barrel, re- 
packed them in a box, and taking out a few birds 
that were not hardly up to the mark, I got another 
order from the same party and returned the birds 
almost as soon as they had landed. This time when 
they received them, they were all right. If I do not 
know what good birds are, I must be very dull of 
understanding, after passing a whole life in the 
business, and probably am incapable of knowing 
right from wrong. One thing I would warn all 
shippers against. If you send a stock of goods of 
any kind and trust them to commission men, learn 
the character of the persons to whom you ship be- 
forehand, and do not be deceived by flowery words 
by which they may attempt to gain shipments. By 
doing this you will save a great deal of worry and 
often of loss. No commission man, when once he 
has got your goods in his possession, likes to have 
them taken away and given to another. He has 
figured out for himself a profit in the sale and when 
he has a suspicion that you are dissatisfied, and you 
order him to do this, you will very likely find that all 
such goods have been sold at a ruinous price, or 
perhaps he has absorbed them altogether without 
any price, and there will be no chance for recov- 
ery for you. We w T ere speaking of the prices of 
birds about the time that freezing began to be in 
common use. At such times any reduction in the 
price of game birds on account of* a large supply 
would send them immediately to the freezers, but 
in 1870 and '71 there were no freezers to be had ; at 
least there was no public freezer in Chicago. We 
bought very many of our birds, especially snipe and 
teal and redheads and some canvas in Chicago, and 



1&6 BAD GAME SPOILS MARKETS. 

some large lots- of canvas and red heads in St. Paul, 
and almost universally they paid us well. T. D. 
Randall was then in Chicago, a commission man, 
and he received a great many snipe in the spring. 
He said to us that if we would give him one dollar 
per dozen, I might look his birds all over, select 
what I liked and refuse what I liked. At this price 
I could not buy them in the country, and therefore 
for that year we let them go by and bought of him, 
and at the time of the fire in Chicago in 1871 prairie 
chickens and quails were offered in any quantity on 
the Chicago market. Shortly after we had got them 
packed, prairie chickens advanced in Boston the 
first of April to $1.10 per pair. Then as we 
started to unload the market broke down to 
sixty cents, and we put them in the freezer 
and carried them over till fall. When fall came 
they were not in first class order, neither were 
they very bad. They were slightly mouldy around 
the head, and I suspicion they had thawed a little 
at some time in the course of the summer, but they 
held their shape, and we had considerable difficulty 
in disposing of them because our room was not quite 
cold enough. At the same time the stock from 
Cresco came on the market and this being so very 
undesirable that it threw a cloud on all frozen stock, 
so that for a year or more such goods could not be 
disposed of for any reasonable price. Still we were 
not so much disappointed as this was our first trial 
and they sold from seventy-five cents down. In 
1880 chickens brought $2.50 in the early fall in 
Nebraska, and $4.00 or more through the winter, 
while towards the nineties they advanced to $5.00 
and $6.00 delivered here. Most of the time from 
1871 to 1881, a period of ten years, prices would 
run down about Christmas in New York to seventy- 
five cents for chickens, and later would run up in 



GAME LAWS DESTROY FIXITY OF PRICES. 197 

February to a dollar or more, when birds were 
scarce, and quail in the same way. When freezing 
began to be general in the early eighties, changes 
were less violent, for all superabundant stocks were 
put away and left to be absorbed when prices had 
advanced. I should think in those ten years $1.00 
would cover the average prices in January and 
February. From 1881 to 1895, there were many 
months when prices reached $1.25 for chickens, and 
three dollars for quails, but $2.00 to $2.25 was the 
more usual price for the latter and when there was 
an over supply a year or two quails ran down to from 
a dollar to a dollar and a quarter in the winter and 
spring. From 1885 to 1895 heavy receipts of quail 
came in from St. Louis, and for some years later, 
and by November the market would break from 
$1.50 to $2.00 and advance to $2.25 and $2.50 later, 
and sometimes to $2.75. In 1895 occurred the high- 
est price ever recorded till then for chickens or 
grouse as we call them, till 1900, when the Game 
Laws coming to be enforced produced a great 
scarcity. There was a -very small crop raised on 
account of the extreme heat that season and birds 
brought early in September $1.00 to $1.12 and 
$1.25, continuing high all the fall and winter, and 
in February reached $1.75 per pair, at which price 
we sold a great many barrels. There had been no 
complaint or obstruction to shipping at that day up 
to February and the market seemed constantly to 
gain strength. The Boston market was very active 
and birds sold there all the spring and quail to May 
1st. In February, 1875, Messrs. Putnam, Wiggin 
and Upton sold for us a box of quail of about two 
hundred birds at five dollars per dozen, the highest 
price I ever was able to reach. I may say that the 
birds that I sold to Davenport in 1867, he reported 



198 TRADE IN PARTRIDGES. 

to me were sold, the quail for six dollars and the 
chickens for nine dollars, which I have no reason to 
doubt was true. Since the troubles began in 1896 
and the seizures of birds for illegal holding or 
shipping the receipts of game of all kinds on the 
market have rapidly decreased, and the demand has 
been correspondingly light. Some birds for a short 
time have brought improved prices, prairie chickens 
selling up to $2.00 per pair and partridges in Oc- 
tober and November to $2.50 and $3.00 per pair. 
Quail have been so easy to get from so many distant 
points and being of small bulk have met the demand 
more promptly, and have not sold much higher than 
before. In 1880 our first frozen partridges sold for 
$1.00 per pair in September. In the next five years 
fresh young birds brought from $1.50 to $2.00 and 
frozen from $1.25 to $1.50, held birds of prime 
quality reaching the latter price, at which price we 
sold thousands of pairs. With these high prices 
traffic was awakened in the Northwest and as the 
tide of birds began to flow in prices declined for 
fresh drawn birds from seventy-five to ninety in 
October and November, and September $1.00 to 
$1.25. After a continued decline of several months 
prices would revive again in February and later, so 
that we had two good seasons to sell in, September 
and February. Then the new laws forbid their 
transportation out of Dakota and Minnesota, so that 
it became impossible to get them through to market 
in any number, from which cause prices have reach- 
ed the high point noted. If this had not been done 
the ruin of the partridges was absolute. They were 
never plenty in Illinois. I never saw but one or two 
birds in the sixties. In the seventies and eighties 
quite a good many were reported in different parts 
of the county, but the destruction of the woods and 



NO CANVAS BACK IN ILLINOIS. 199 

underbrush has gone on so rapidly it is doubtful 
if there are a dozen birds in Henry County. The 
swamp lands in the north part of the County have 
dried up so fast, all kinds of ducks make short 
visits in the Fall and the teal of both kinds find no 
place to light or feed. Mallards, which used to stay 
all the Fall until the ponds froze up, often thou- 
sands of them in the marshes until December, when 
the shooting was best, come but seldom and in 
small numbers, and do not remain but a few days. 
Red heads and canvas back were always scarce here, 
are never seen in the Fall, and few in the spring, 
when they are uniformly poor. For many years 
we had large receipts from the Illinois River in the 
Spring, from Havana, Beardstown and Maquoketa, 
and buyers took them readily in the Fall at $2.50 
to $3.00 per pair, for which they would not now 
pay over one dollar, and the trade was of such small 
proportions it was finally neglected or abandoned. 
What shooting there is in the Fall is in Wisconsin, 
Minnesota and Dakota, and there are the only com- 
mercial birds obtainable, and the restrictions placed 
upon getting them make their capture difficult. It 
seems that only in a very restricted sense the com- 
merce in birds is likely to be kept up, and if the 
demand does not increase it is not needed. The 
trade will be confined to Fall and early Winter 
months, if any continues, as it was forty years 
ago. The shooting of prairie chickens in Henry 
County has been very light since 1870. The larger 
part has been killed in the summer months, and 
only till the new law went into effect did the hunters 
confine their hunt to the month of September, and 
now killing is entirely forbidden for several years. 
This could have been improved by making the open 
season in October instead. Then the birds would 



200 BEST WAY TO MAKE A BAG. 

have been able to take care of themselves. The 
nicest weather we have is in October, when the 
killing frosts have cnt off the top of the corn stalks, 
where the birds stay during- the day time, and are 
easily captured. There is much science in getting 
a good bag, even then, for the time they will allow 
your approach is limited between nine o'clock in 
the morning and four or five o'clock in the after- 
noon. It is useless to go into the corn field before 
or after that time. Only the brightness of the sun 
holds them in cover, and they are scratching and 
dusting themselves in the hot hours of the day, and 
wandering listlessly about, not going very far from 
where they first alighted. The better way is if you 
are up early in the morning in the neighborhood of 
fields they are known to visit, to quietly watch their 
movements as they leave the long grass in their 
roosting places, when you can mark them carefully 
as they light down in the field. Moreover, if you 
go to hunt them do not waste your time on weedy 
or uncultivated fields. They will not go there un- 
less frightened, and it would be almost impossible to 
find them if they were there. Therefore pick out 
the clean fields and those that have signs of being 
used and do not disturb them on cloudy or rainy 
days, when they come out into the grass and stubble 
and will not allow you to approach them. We 
hunted after this fashion for many Falls until snow 
flew, first Northwest of Cambridge a few miles, 
and later on the Edwards bottom South of the 
city, and always with good results. South of At- 
kinson in 1866, in November, about five miles out, 
we hitched our horse for three successive weeks at 
the same tree top, omitting Sundays- and Mondays, 
and we took in that time three hundred and forty 
chickens, The lowest number we killed in any one 



P. CHICKEN SHOOTING IN 1866. 201 

day was twenty, and the largest was thirty-six, 
which netted one dollar per pair, very closely, on 
the ground. On cloudy days we looked after quail 
and snipe, and let the chickens rest. In the corn 
fields the dog was trained to beat the ground very 
closely, not over a rod wide in any direction, while 
in grass cover he would beat out many rods and 
seldom flush any. The moment he struck a chick- 
en's track or got the wind of one he was as im- 
movable as a rock till you came up. Further than 
that we found the great necessity of getting the 
best gun obtainable, and not carry it too long, 
whenever anyone wanted it more than we did. 
We usually bought a new one every Fall, so they 
did not lead, and sometimes late when the birds 
grew wilder, we used wire cartridges, which, when 
properly fitted to the gun, did wonders. I know I 
have killed single birds over twenty rods, and I be- 
lieve in firing at a flock I have killed them nearly 
double that distance. After January we hunted 
quails in Knox County and they sold readily after 
1862 at $2 to $2.25 per dozen. For two or three 
Winters the shooting was excellent. The corn 
fields were very small, only a few acres at most, 
in among timbered settlements, and in all that time 
I never heard the report of a gun unless it was 
my own or some of my companions. You would 
not get very far away in a day. If the birds were 
in the corn field and you did not get them there you 
followed them out on the hillside and picked them 
up one by one, sometimes in little brush patches, 
sometimes where a clearing had been made, and the 
little oak shoots had sprung up a foot or more and 
left a cover of brown leaves where the birds gath- 
ered as night approached. Sometimes a plaintive 
note was heard from lost and scattered flocks, which 



202 QUAIL HUNTING IN /KNOX CO., ILL. 

brought us up to them again. The hillsides were 
often very steep, and it was quite a task in ferreting 
out the birds here after they were once scattered. 
We kept them in limits as much as possible, killing 
the outside birds first, and in this way many flocks 
slept their last sleep. Many times a day we would 
secure a whole flock, or nearly a whole one, at one 
firing, and fifty to seventy birds was a usual day's 
hunt. One large flock of twenty birds used a corn 
field adjoining a small timber patch. The stalks 
were so broken they would not stay but a short time, 
and I missed them a long while. One morning 
a light snow had fallen. As I struck the field, 
which was open so I could see far down the rows, 
I discovered the flock piled up and lying very flat 
on the ground. I walked along as if to pass them 
by in a quartering direction. As I got a step or two 
past I turned suddenly and faced them and fired 
one barrel. Only one bird raised, which stopped 
with the remaining barrel. All the birds that fed in 
the fields were fat and heavy, but there were some 
flocks which never left the timber, and they were so 
poor they could hardly fly. These we did not mo- 
lest. One of those years we hunted on the hills 
above Gladstone, along the river bottom below 
Burlington, where we found many of these starved 
birds trailing around in the snow among the bushes 
near the river with apparently nothing to eat, and 
their cry was pitiful. It was a very cold Winter, 
and in many places you could walk over the snow 
banks. Many flocks perished, and they had to be 
recruited the following year from places where 
food abounded. I have never seen quails more 
plenty in Henry county than in 1859 an ^ i860. At 
that time we were hunting in the fields bordering 
on the Big Slough and many corn fields were as 



QUAIL PLENTY IN HENRY CO. IN i860. E03 

small as in Knox County. Prices in the Fall were 
18 to 20 cents each. In November they fell down 
to $1.50 per dozen. We were shipping to A. & E. 
Robbins, and every week our shipments piled up 
more and more. The first of December we shipped 
over a thousand birds in one day and the price fell 
to eight cents each. We were buying very many 
of them at one dollar per dozen or over, and we 
had to abandon the business for some months. 
Those hard years followed which we have already 
described, and afterwards we did most of our hunt- 
ing in Knox County. At that time the bluffs along 
Rock River and Green River were full of birds, but 
they were so low we did not seek after them very 
much. When the revival of prices came towards 
the end of the civil war, the reserves were drawn 
down quickly, and since then all efforts in that 
direction have been scattering and infrequent. 
Bushes have been cleaned up, vines torn down and 
the grass has gone under the plow, and what flocks 
there are have fled back into the great corn fields, 
where it is difficult to gather very many of them. 
We skipped one winter in Knox Sounty to give 
them a chance to recover if they would, but after 
our return there we found them no plentier than 
when we hunted them every year. The great de- 
sideratum with quails as with all other birds is that 
they should have grass or bushes, or some kind of 
cover, and that is now seldom seen. The most 
plentiful supplies in this country have come from 
along the Mississippi, where the country is rough 
and fitted to be their home. A dozen years ago 
nearly all the quail were killed in this neighborhood, 
but a remnant was left around New Boston, Keiths- 
burg and further South, which recruited the fields 
wherever the birds were frozen out, so that they 



204 TRADE IN FROZEN GAME. 

are moderately plenty now all over the county. We 
do not look to see them any more plenty as corn 
fields are not suitable for nesting places. Since 1880 
buyers have had recourse largely to Kansas and 
Nebraska, and Oklahoma, and the supply there has 
seemed to be limitless, till now the laws have be- 
come enforced, and the cities will have to do with- 
out. 

We have not said very much about frozen game 
since freezers came into fashion soon after 1880. 
I imagine there will be no dissenting voice to the 
statement that from that period until 1892, and in 
some cases until 1896, that where the freezing was 
properly done and the temperature steadily main- 
tained, the business was very profitable. The main 
support was the active demand for game birds of 
every description, except between '93 and '96; dur- 
ing the commercial disasters. In many places game 
gave out, and this threw increased demand on the 
remaining fields of supply. No first class hotel or 
restaurant was considered worthy the name that did 
not regularly furnish game dinners. Game was a 
cash article, and it could be sold for cash as readily 
as government bonds. One successful packing made 
the way for another, and one packer's success was 
the prelude for another's success. In Iowa and 
nearly all the States West of the Mississippi the 
industry flourished, some places packing only snipe 
and plover, others packing chickens and quails, and 
still others dow birds for the short season they 
tarried, and some packed only ducks. All these 
varieties were laid away in abundance. What were 
not native and of sufficient quantity we shipped in 
from the several States, and tested the keeping 
qualities of the different kinds thoroughly. After 
the experience had in packing quails in air tight 



REFRIGERATION STARTED IN 1876. 205 

packages, we put up all. our birds in the same man- 
ner. It was some expense, but in the end it was 
economical, as well as successful. This prevented 
prices from going so high as well as it saved the 
market from going too low. Hunters made good 
profits, as well as the packers. In some cases we 
carried the goods to the second or third year, but 
few people took the chances of carrying them so 
long, and unless the temperature was suitably low 
or some kind of air tight packages were used, very 
few took the chances for over six months. When 
we did carry longer we did it with much hesitation, 
and generally from compulsion, where some kinds 
of birds did not find a ready market. The only 
kind that gave me much trouble was mallards. 
They occupied a large space, were constantly ac- 
cumulating on your hands and, of course, went into 
the freezer with the result that there was always 
some complaint that they were soft when they came 
out. With this exception, the useful sorts opened 
up fine, grass plover exceptionally so, and snipe and 
teal always made money. 

In this connection past experience may be of some 
benefit to those who anticipate embarking in cold 
storage. The kinds of goods to be stored and the 
temperature required for each are the important 
factors to consider. Until 1876 refrigeration in the 
United States had made no progress. At that time 
and during the World's Fair at Philadelphia, the 
Pictet machine of Geneva, Switzerland, was ex- 
hibited, and the interest in it became very great. 
The principle of the machine was the reduction of 
sulphurous acid under pressure, when it becomes a 
liquid, and is then allowed to vaporize and cool 
a current of brine which flows around the water 
tanks to be frozen. Either this or the expansion of 



206 PARTRIDGE TRADE RUINED. 

A 

some compressed gas is the basis of all refrigera- 
tors, and Pictet's plan is by many considered the 
best. The main difficulty with all these machines 
is their expense, both in the first cost and later in 
the running of the machine, and unless the busi- 
ness is very large and can be successfully applied 
to the preservation of many different articles, it 
will not be found profitable. If I were to engage 
again in cold storage I should most certainly go 
back to the old method, where the expense is tri- 
fling, no possibility of your freezing rooms getting 
out of order, and one man can direct and almost 
maintain the efficiency of a large plant. Our old 
style was so simple and cheap that its total cost did 
not exceed three dollars per barrel to carry frozen 
goods for one year, or three hundred dollars for a 
room holding one hundred barrels. There is noth- 
ing to be gained by holding a room below 18 or 20 
F., for any frozen goods you may want to carry, 
and the cost of ice in most places is quite inconsid- 
erable. For eggs, where temperature to be main- 
tained is 30 or 31, I should use a fan to expel the 
foul air, which can easily be run in connection with 
a dynamo now to be found in all important places. 
Up to 1880 I had not handled any frozen part- 
ridges, and although Bond in Chicago offered them 
at fifty cents per pair, I did not buy, as they were not 
reputed to keep well when drawn. At this time I 
put up a few whole birds frozen, to see how they 
would keep through the Summer. In the Fall they 
sold promptly at $1.00 per pair. Then I put up 
more partridges, five barrels, placing them along- 
side of frozen turkeys. When the turkeys were sold 
I did not realize on two cars as much profit as I 
did on the five barrels of birds, when I discontinued 
packing poultry entirely. Along after the early 



PARTRIDGE TRADE RUINED. 207 

8o's Col. Bond was buying large quantities of frozen 
partridges from Minnesota, and they were whole 
birds, but the market was full of them. I com- 
menced buying of him and packed away several 
thousand pair at about 16 to 20 cents each. They 
sold well in the Fall following at $1.25 per pair, 
and later at $1.50, before the Fall price dropped 
again. Markets had now improved so much, trade 
was stimulated and a new dealer appeared in St. 
Paul with whom I connected later, and who, in a 
few years, monopolized the N6rthwestern trade. I 
took several thousand pairs of him at $4.25 per 
dozen. This relieved the market from going down 
so low as usual, and the St. Paul dealer replaced 
his sales in still larger lots, till all that kind of game 
seemed in a fair way of extinction. The state 
then took a hand and forbid shipments out of it. 
In the meantime we took in fifteen hundred pairs 
in Wisconsin in the distance of not over one hun- 
dred miles, and with this stock on hand we had 
enough to last two or three years. We carried 
them through that length of time, and the last 
birds were as good as the first, and brought as much 
money, for all that we kept in good order. Soon 
after this Col. Bond left the trade, the Robbins' 
died in New York, and the life of the trade died out 
with them. 

No history at this time of game and game killing 
in Henry County would be complete unless it em- 
braced the doings of the Mapes Brothers, and espe- 
cially John Mapes, who has been here since the 
first hunting began. His father was an old resident 
when I first knew him, and I heard it said at that 
time his word was as good as his bond. John was 
of heavy, Herculean frame like a gladiator, with a 
constitution exceptionally hardy, and now at seventy 



208 



MAPES BROTHERS CONTINUED. 



years of age seems likely to remain here some time. 
Their farm was located on the head waters of Mud 
Creek, an inconsiderable stream which finds its way 
into Green River, and these Nimrods traversed its 
banks with such frequency the paths were worn as 
deep as that of the Indians' along the affluents of 




The Nestor of Hunters. 



the Missouri or Mississippi. They had a trace of 
Indian blood in their veins. They were of the na- 
ture of Gypsies. Hunting, fishing and trapping was 
their pastime, and they descended the valley through 
which the Creek flowed much as the Northern 



JOHN MAPES. 209 

tribes which overran Rome, not so much for con- 
quest as to enjoy the fertile fields of Lombardy and 
Piedmont. When the family grew up the major 
part went westward to the Republican river in 
Kansas. John always bore up the family name for 
his exploits with the gun and rod. I have known 
him to hunt snipe all day from five to ten miles 
away, in the Fall, and bring his birds to town and 
sell ' them every day when there was very little 
market at five cents' a piece. One Fall he lugged 
his chickens from the bottom to town the whole 
summer through till he was nigh broken down. 
Sometimes he was down the Mississippi in the Fall, 
sometimes up that stream in the summer. Then he 
would be hunting quail in Kansas and Nebraska 
through the winter. Later he moved down on the 
Green River, and got him a farm which overlooked 
the broad meadows of that stream, and though al- 
ways a brigand, hunting on the farms of others, 
he could not and would not allow any poaching 
on the lands which he controlled. He was not 
easily excited, he was not easily afraid, he was not 
so timid but what he would draw profit from his 
own family as quickly as he would from a stranger. 
He absolutely refused to take a rest for rest's sake, 
as time so much wasted. His breath was ripened 
with the ozone of the morning, the evening dews 
brought healing to his tired feet. He had no vices. 
He did not know there was a saloon. He had no 
religion, he did not know or care for a church, 
and it was an even thing with him whether it 
pointed to hell or Heaven. If he could have be- 
lieved he was a child of Heaven he would not have 
cared to return to his Father's house. He worship- 
ped the senses — the altar stairs without the altar. 
Sight and sound and feeling were the harmonies. 



2iO JOHN MAPES. HUNTERS RAN TOUGH. 

They were the three graces which brought him de- 
liverance. Tihey sat at his table, they followed him 
into the fields. They rounded up his days of labor, 
they checked up his days of sport. The quiver of 
a duck's wing was more potent than an angel's. 
Feathers overbore faith. What the eye had not 
seen nor the ear heard were the discords. Such 
men ought never to grow old' for when the eye is 
unable to supply vision, or hearing to pick up the 
lost chords, from being skeptics of others they be- 
come skeptics of themselves. In time after he was 
sixty years of age he left his family a mile away 
and crossed the river, not the Styx whose barge 
made such chastened music to* the immortals, nor 
with the ghostly Charon to ferry him, but his own 
son-in-law who passed him to a land he had chosen 
where an unsympathetic wife would not despoil him 
of the fruits of his labor, nor swallow up his eco- 
nomies, and where the ducks might visit him al- 
ways, and so he says they do. 

We cannot at this time refrain from commenting 
upon the character of the great army of those who 
have taken up hunting for a profit. With two or 
three notable exceptions, I cannot find that their 
lives have been sweet or savory, or that they have 
served any high or beneficent purpose upon their 
contemporaries. One only of them all was, I 
deemed, a representative man, of broad and liberal 
nature, sharing at one time the confidence of all 
men, using his gifts as God gave him to use, a 
pronounced Christian, who, in the day of peril, to 
avoid payment of debt, abandoned his post and be- 
tween two days started on his long journey to the 
Pacific coast, as says the bard, 

"When you and I and all of us fell down 
And bloody treason triumphed over us." 



GEO. BEERS AS A FINANCIER. 2li 

We were shocked. For a long time nothing was 
heard from him. Then he authorized his brother 
to go around to his creditors and offer them twenty- 
five cents on the dollar. Out on such outrage ! Bet- 
ter offer nothing and be bankrupt than to couple the 
offer with the assurance that he was able to do 
better, but would not. Some men are born with 
great natural abilities. They go into battle with 
polished guns and shining helmets, which are too 
heavy for them, and they are borne down early in 
the struggle, and abandon their guns and accoutre- 
ments and stand trembling before defeat. They 
drop into an ambulance when they should ride in the 
band wagon, and they drive heavily through the 
mud and mire of stirring columns which ride on 
before them, and with cheer and shout lead the way 
to San Juan. The others are clog men who follow 
behind, whose vices betray them into weakness, or 
their faith is thrown away in the presence of dis- 
aster. There is another kind whose weapons are 
light but effective, who take just stores enough to 
last on their journey, who seize the first and fastest 
conveyance they can get hold of, covering years 
with moments, and with flying steed break into 
wavering columns and summon them to victory, 
gaining the salvos of a nation and the applause of 
history. The first of these represents George Beers. 
I was with him on the ridge between the Twin 
Lakes in Loraine when he shot off his thumb, and 
helped to get him home again. I think the weights 
he carried were too heavy. He was a bad disci- 
plinarian, but that was no excuse for shifting his 
burden on others and then mockingly abandoning 
them to the struggle. He was a bad financier, and 
bad financiering and bad morals are almost syn- 
onymous. Such men float easily along on the 



2i2 HUNTERS MADE MONEY EASILY. 

stream of good luck, as they call it, when it passes 
their way, and become too exalted over success. 
With the ebb tide they fall back into the trough 
of their many wasting burdens again. I cannot 
see that their calamities came from carrying a gun. 
Often I have thought they came because they did 
not carry it. fbr many years Hunting was more 
profitable than farm work, and was as good as a 
trade. Money was made easy and spent freely. 
Such men pair their vices with their virtues, and 
hope to balance the account, but vices are negatives, 
they start at zero and go downward, and denote the 
absence rather than the expression of values and 
the results are faulty and uncommercial, and the 
stain is unatoned. The glow of the outer world and 
the illusions of sense more largely influence youth- 
ful natures which have learned only physical wants, 
as in the case of the boy who, on coming out of a 
devotional meeting, said to his mother, "They didn't 
bring me any cheese, Ma, they sang bringing in 
the cheese (sheaves)." All natures require the 
counterpoise of moral forces or dry rot supervenes. 
"I know men," said Napoleon Bonaparte, "but Jesus 
Christ was not a man." You may dig deep in the 
earth and channel the foundations and superimpose 
the tints of flowers and the breath of summer, but 
the hydraulic process must go on and the fountains 
be reached or our labor is lost. No business can 
flourish where intemperance knocks at the door and 
is let in. Only healthy, robust natures can stand 
the strain of hard travels and uncertain fare which 
hunters must endure, and in the relaxation they are 
fain to cultivate the saloons where morality is con- 
stricted and disease blossoms and sheds its baleful 
fruit among families and firesides until the want 
of a penny becomes that of a pound and hope 



E. P. WHIPPLE. 213 

dies out, and crime treads on the heels of seedy gar- 
ments and unclean speech and the short life is sur- 
rendered and goes back to its Maker loaded down 
with judgments and the terrors of a fast coming 
remorse. Fifty years ago E. P. Whipple wrote, 
'To one who reflects on the nature and capacity of 
the human mind, there is something inconceivably 
awful in its perversions. Look at it as it comes 
fresh and plastic from its Maker. Look at it as it 
returns stained and hardened to its Maker. Con- 
ceive of a mind, a living soul, with the germs and 
faculties which Infinity cannot exhaust, as it first 
beams upon you in its glad morning of existence, 
quivering with life and joy, exulting in the bound- 
ing sense of its developing energies, beautiful and 
brave and generous and joyous and free. The clear 
pure spirit, bathed in the auroral light of its un- 
conscious immortality, and then follow it in its dark 
passage through life as it stifles and kills every as- 
piration and inspiration of its being, until it becomes 
a dead soul entombed in a living frame." So many 
with a florid countenance of apparent freshness, 
not only try to deceive others but often deceive 
themselves. ' A drunkard once reeled to Mr. White- 
field and said, "I am one of your converts." ''I 
believe you are," was the reply, "for you are cer- 
tainly none of God's." Men cultivate companion- 
ship often of the most sordid kind. The Prisoner 
of Chillon would not have been loth to leave his 
prison walls if he had not become acquainted with 
spiders and flies. 

Of all the hunters I have known with but one or 
two exceptions, none of them had a moderately cul- 
tivated taste. As Wordsworth says, 

"A primrose by the river's brim, 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more." 



214 SALOONS PAY IN SOME WAY. 

It is related of Sir Walter Scott that in com- 
pany with his wife he was crossing the fields when 
the lambs began to skip and play before them. On 
which Scott remarked on the beautiful sight and 
how nice the lambs were, and she replied that "they 
were nice when boiled." A big butcher once re- 
marked to Dr. Johnson, as if to gain that writer's 
applause, "Who rules o'er freemen, must himself 
be free." The Doctor surprised him by saying, 
"Rank nonsense, as well say 'Who slays fat oxen 
must himself be fat.' " 

There are two things that war against a man's 
better nature, vices or passions, and apparent per- 
sonal interest. The vices every man will tell you 
what they are, but they belong only to his neighbor. 
The interests of a man are not always what they 
seem to be, but either through a mental cloud or 
perverse or inactive conscience, the properties which 
should make him better are declined for those which 
please him or bring immediate rewards. In a large 
sense money outweighs all other things, but there 
are other tangible values which everyone calls his 
interests which he must protect, and these, with 
the great mass of men, are not moral forces at all. 
Everybody can observe what friendships are formed 
by trade which puts money into the hands of those 
who are eager to reciprocate profits, but not senti- 
ments or association. A few dollars judiciously 
distributed has saved many a man from prison, if 
not from the gallows. This is what keeps your 
saloons alive — they pay. This is what keeps up 
companionship with ourselves when otherwise we 
are ready to say that all is gone. If we could strip 
ourselves of this self entanglement and be guided 
only by what was our real interest, rather than the 
makeshift of what appears to be so, this robe of ours 



WEALTH IS THE SCAFFOLD OF MORALS. 215 

would be brightened up and the sublime glories 
would reach us, and not the glittering baubles which 
shut them from our hearts. I would not like to sor- 
row as those who have no hope, but I see the clouds 
forming, and though the showers may do us no 
harm and the rainbow may follow, a whirlwind may 
be in store when the foundations are insecure, and 
disaster may whiten the fields with wreckage instead 
of the burden of harvest. The late Charles Blish 
of this city was wont to declare "The present 
generation is doomed. When I see young men with 
no visible means of support, wasting their time and 
energies with traveling expenses far beyond their 
means, which I would not think of contracting, and 
the round of entertainments which fills out their 
days and nights and draws upon limited purses and 
must be met often by dishonesty and crime, or en- 
tailed upon the thrift of ancestors, I know they are 
without hope." We may well see that this evil lies 
deeper than the surface. Though every man's 
pocket was lined with gold, a good man does not 
spring upon the world because of great treasure. 
More often the presence of great wealth is a handi- 
cap which only the few turn to profitable account. 
There is a widespread defection from the high 
standard of morals today which is beginning to 
bear fruit. You can hardly trust your neighbor, 
you are not sure of yourself. If you have a valuable 
interest it must be secured by some surety which 
places the responsibility farther back than its source. 
Why not trust the principal rather than the surety 
who must be paid therefor? Simply because 
the moral sense of the former is only a creature of 
law, and is subject to attack. There would be no 
attack if there had been no failure, but why fail? 
Every material thing that is needed to do business 



216 WEALTH IS THE SCAFFOLD OF MORALS. 

is around you. Capital and labor wait on the 
man with a purpose, and they follow him 
around and plead for opportunity. From 
whence, then, does honesty of purpose come? 
It must come from an informed and cul- 
tivated conscience, and that conscience must be 
the basis of your everyday acts. This will forbid 
your accepting any kind of property without gift 
or payment, and any speculation which involves 
surety. This is not a chance world in which you 
reap what you do not sow. Otherwise no human 
life could exist, or anything which is on the earth 
wrought out by man. "Two things," said the great 
astronomer Kepler, "fill me with wonder and 
amazement, the starry heavens above, and the mor- 
al nature within man." Look up, oh man, at the 
heavens, and see if you can unfold the riddle of the 
stars. The Rosetta Stone in the Delta of the Nile 
unlocked the hieroglyphics of Egypt. The Infinite 
which presides all around you and beats upon 
thrones and wastes their pomp and glory in obliv- 
ion will not open with a finite key. More than two 
thousand years have passed since the prophet fore- 
told that "no more a Prince shall sit on the throne 
of Egypt." Can you tell where the Prophet derived 
his knowledge which has been verified to this day? 
The world stupefied with sin cries out for God. The 
French Revolution which struck down all morals 
was forced to declare that if there was no God it 
would be compelled to invent one. Now we are 
fast reaching that point. Reverence is dying out, 
the chill and the gloom of the churches is arrayed 
by insincere partisans against the hope and faith 
which seeks to draw all men into honest and conse- 
crated lives. If you forget this you trample upon 
vour own instincts. The failure of this man or that 



THE PUBLIC CONSCIENCE. 217 

man will not help you, for all good and worthy 
things have counterfeits, and it would surpass all - 
record if some Judas or Simon did not take the 
life or solicit the franchises of our Lord. To believe 
is to be chastened with whips. To not believe is 
to be chastised with scorpions. 

The public conscience is the greatest criminal we 
have in these times. Neither the caitiff did nor 
the he and she Silverman has very far exceeded the 
bounds of the kingdom which society allows to of- 
fenders. What a roost of unclean birds ! But the 
business methods of business men in this country 
produces a new batch of conspirators as fast as the 
old are cleaned up. The apathy of most men whose 
interests are not at stake is astounding. A laugh 
will intimidate the strongest resolution, but a laugh 
at crime is criminal. Forgery and perjury are 
bought with a golden girdle which the poor aspir- 
ant thinks will make him a rainbow after the storm 
of sin has ceased for a season. Mental reserva- 
tion will cover up some acts, but it will not drive 
out consumption, the sputum of which is in every- 
body's throat. The unawed and uncompromising 
stamina we once had has lost citizenship. The 
penalties for violated rights in this life ought in 
some way to be compatible with the punishment 
which shall follow hereafter, else there is no hell, 
conscience is a misnomer, and our ideas of right 
and wrong are confused and calamitous. 

Do not think that patriotism is the highest type 
of valor. There are greater victories than battle 
flags. There are sieges once begun which never 
end, bloodless because they reach where flesh and 
blood can never come. The moral stalwart is not 
here, he is risen and will hardly be found this side 
of Galilee. Self-abnegation stands at the door of 



218 THE DEPARTED. THE INDIAN WARDS. 

every perfect soul. Until you can reach that goal 
you cannot enter in. The lions of St. Mark were 
not those which had crunched human flesh. The 
eagles that were borne along the Rhine had never 
screamed in their native haunts of Thessaly or 
Piedmont. The only selfish thing in the world is 
the rainbow which permits you to see it only at 
your angle. The only selfish thing in the universe 
is Heaven which you shall see for yourself and not 
another, but of this selfishness may we all receive 
and grace for grace. 

When that which is perfect shall come, selfish- 
ness shall cease to be an unholy passion, for there 
is no rivalry where there are no possessions and 
no emotions to betray where they are cradled in 
love. 

It would be impossible to describe all who have 
been associated with us since this history began ; 
the Fronks, the Hiserodts, the Joles, Clements and 
Runnels, and the vast army who have come and 
gone, and many who are now out of reach of sound 
or voice, the Choir Invisible, but memory of whom 
is fragrant with the good and tolerant of the bad in 
human character, and whose varied ideals have gone 
to make up the ebb and flow, the contracting and 
expanding of the activities which everyday life 
vests in us, and to all such we send greeting. We 
greet many more beyond the reach and limits of 
Henry County, many of whom we have not seen 
and yet loved, from distant states, from beyond the 
great rivers where the heats scorch and wither, 
where the sands blister the feet of the traveler and 
the winds carrying the breath of volcanoes suck out 
the life of every living thing. There are the wards 
of the Nation, whose only school of discipline is 
the vices, who are barred from many of the benefits 



JOHN A. LYON. 219 

which their land produces. The Indian lands are 
overflowing with chickens and quail, but the white 
man is the only referee they have whether they shall 
kill and market what they have fed and protected 
in their fields. Most of them are very poor, and if 
they could market the game of that region it would 
be an immense benefit to them in becoming good 
citizens. 

In this record very little has been said of the 
men who were my consignees, of whom we have 
often spoken, who always rejoiced when success 
overtook us and sympathized with us when defeated, 
and have now, one and all of the great trio' whom we 
shall name, entered that fixed abode where the pan- 
orama of this life is an ineffaceable reality. It is 
with pleasure I lay this wreath of many threads 
and fibres of memory at the little shrine by the way- 
side where the wayfarer can linger and where the 
virtues of each shall be recounted to the traveler, 
and where faults (as who has none?) be left to 
that charity which never faileth, at the fountain 
which they unlocked, and drinking of its clear crys- 
tal waters may go forth refreshed. 

John A. Lyon was Nature's nobleman. He was 
absolutely void of cheat or deceit. For thirty-five 
years I knew him intimately, examined his books 
many times on points which others might have de- 
sired to conceal, and he was the same unflinching, 
unreserved man he was when I first knew him. Hfe 
made mistakes in figures, but I never saw him feel 
worse than when the mistake was in his favor. In 
this case he could not sleep, he could not lie still till 
he knew what the mistake was and the correction 
was made. If others made mistakes against him 
he made no note of it beyond the time it occurred, 
and he would not ask reparation unless the mistake 



220 



JOHN A. LYON. 




John A. Lyon, the Incorruptible. 



was very great. He was close, careful and method- 
ical, and never let his expenses outrun his income. 
When I last saw him, about 1889, I was troubled 
because I could not seem to obtain clear insight 
into his feelings, and when the conversation was the 
most earnest and animated he would often lapse 
into silence, as though he did not understand what 
I was saying. He would not remember what I had 
said when I repeated it, and his eyes had that far 



AMOS ROBBINS. 221 

away look which was as if seeking to penetrate the 
invisible. I thought then, and still think he was 
wrapt with a vision which was unfolding to him 
the world of spiritual life which seemed to belittle 
all the transactions of this. It may have come to 
him that his life was drawing near to a close, and 
that the dawn of a better morning beyond the hill 
tops was soon to* clasp him in its munificent em- 
brace. (I shall see him but not now. I shall be- 
hold him but not nigh, for he has entered in through 
the gates into the city.) 

Of Amos Robbins, the acting manager of the 
firm of A. & E. Robbins, I shall speak briefly. He 
was not a man to inspire emotion. If you had any 
tender sympathies, any weakness of nerves which 
you could not restrain, you had to cast them aside 
in his presence. He was a colossus of finance and 
where he. went Love withdrew. He warned you in 
advance if you had any love not to imperil it on 
him. He was a Harriman or a Hill, financing 
great measures which the common crowd knew 
nothing about. In his department his sway was 
absolute. All the managers of restaurants and ho- 
tels looked to him for their game. When he told 
them to drop one kind, it was done. When he 
told them to take up another it was done without 
asking why. He bought the best that money could 
buy and he would not put out on a good customer 
anything which he knew in any sense was inferior. 
He had abundant capital. He paid magnificently 
for what he bought if it suited him. He speculated 
on the market whenever he had an opportunity and 
seldom speculated unwisely. If he caught the mar- 
ket short of what he had, no price would permit 
a short to slip into cover unharmed. He made his 
own combination of circumstances and worked them 



222 



AMOS ROBBINS. 




Amos Robbins, the Caesar. 



out with a vigor that needed no outside help. Un- 
der such circumstances it was necessary that a 
shipper should not place his life in his hands, so 
that when the stars in their courses fought for 
him as they did for Sisera and were moved out of 
their orbits by his tremendous mechanism, they 
could be drawn back again without your life being ' 
at stake. We had a foil, two of them. The one 
was John A. Lyon and the other was Edward 



EDWARD SUMNER. 

Sumner. Neither of them carried any large cap- 
ital but they were intelligent, industrious students 
of values when prices were persistently under val- 
ued, and many times the prices rebounded on the 
street within a few moments, or minutes, or hours, 
and no one could tell why. Amos Robbins made 
a fortune for the firm and enough for himself, but 
it was not large. He was of a convivial nature and 
vast sums were said to have been expended in his 
entertainments. Nevertheless no man could do as 
that man. He was head and shoulders above 
all that went before him, and none after him have 
been able to follow in his steps. The moment he 
was dead the game business was palsied, and the 
prices which for long years waited on his footsteps 
were rudely cast aside. No man could place them 
where they could command such firmness as he 
himself. He handled the market as a tradesman 
would handle his wares, selling them when and 
where they should be sold. There was but one 
Robbins, there will not be another. All the rest 
are pygmies, sitting around camp fires and telling 
idle tales, whilst he with higher range of vision 
and keener insight swept the field of his chosen 
industry with the wand of a magician, filled up 
his coffers with the quiet assurance of one bred to 
millions, and died the undisputed peer of the field 
he had won. 

Of Edward Sumner it may be said that he soon 
saw what Fulton Market was doing and he set 
about to draw some of the trade from there into 
Washington Market. He was interested largely in 
poultry and game. He was a shrewd calculator 
of values that were and were going to be, and in time 
he put his attention more fully into the game busi- 
ness. Beyond one or two mistakes, one of which 



224 



EDWARD SUMNER. 




Edward Sumner, the Student. 



at least was a heavy one, he was as good a man 
to trade with as I ever would want. I believe he 
was an honest trader, though his language was so 
vile and offensive you would at times feel justified 
to dispute it. He was a thoroughly competent 
judge of different kinds of game he handled. It 
was said of him that he would take a frozen snipe, 
chew it up without cooking, so he could tell wheth- 
er it would thaw out sweet or not. Without the 



THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUND NO MORE. 225 

mistakes mentioned he might have become a power 
£ Washington Market. He was a splendid pa- 
man From no man was I more pleased to get cor- 
spondence. He did not talk much tamp-* 
He was willing to give you all the good points 
that Should golem your shipments but you mus 
follow your own opinions. He was a tireless ,vr.t 
on every occasion you needed to hear from 
hkn He would pay drafts to the bottom dollar 
anoarently and he was never whining about it and. 
sendu g you mean notices of what he would or 
vould°not do. In this way he dis counted many 
commission men, who get into a fever when their 
bank account runs low and a draft would mean 
bankruptcy. Sumner talked everything, filthy be- 
ond endurance or description, and never seemed 
to think it was out of place. In ear her years . I did 
not much notice it and I do not think he indulged 
fc i it quite so freely. Something must be allowed 
for the society around him, for market men are 
proverbially foolish and filthy talkers, and they do 
not seem to notice the effect of it themselves. With 
such an active dealer in each market and a com- 
mission man on the street, that person was fortu- 
nate who had the benefit of their united efforts. 
These three men all died within two or three years, 
not far from 1890, and bitterly have I felt their 

loss • 

The Great West has seen but one happy hunting 
around We do not know where it will ever find 
another". Henry County, in the Valley of the Mis- 
sissippi, has held more game than any land of its 
size in the world. If the myriads that have pos- 
sessed it should lift up their wings like the cheru- 
bim in Ezekiel, the thunders of their voices would 
drown Niagara. What happiness and untold bene- 



226 THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS NO MORE. 

fit it has brought to millions ; what tables have been 
garnished all over the East as well as the West with 
the rich fruits of the hunter's labor. What other 
department of business has so well represented an 
united country where the benefit of one State was 
the happy heritage of all. Now, the States are an- 
tagonistic, the Commonwealth is no longer pre- 
served. To those of us who have passed the meri- 
dian of life, feeling the approaches of age, the game 
campaign of the past will not soon be forgotten. 
Many will come to hear our story and forget them- 
selves listening to the narration. The half has not 
been told, but enough to mark the thirty years dur- 
ing which the game birds of the country passed 
away. Many mementoes of rare sport will doubt- 
less be treasured by each one of you. The old gun 
will awake new energies, its antiquated style will 
recall pleasant memories, they will sing its dox- 
ology, they will utter a new dispensation, they will 
follow you in your quiet hours, they will fasten 
upon your dreams. Along the Green and Rock 
Rivers, the wide Mississippi and the bays and bends 
of the Illinois, you will hear the chant of the wa- 
ters anew. The grandchild will come to take your 
place. Like the schoolmaster, you will "shoulder 
your crutch and show how fields were won." You 
will oil well the old stock, you will smooth down 
the rusty barrels. If Homer is to be believed, 
Ulysses thought as much of polishing his splendid 
armor as he did of victory. 'With my staff," said 
Jacob, "I passed over this Jordan." On the banks 
of the Tiber stood the Temple of Janus, where the 
victorious Roman Generals hung up their trophies 
of war. Oh, Father T'iber, in this Western Hemis- 
phere, where the great waters gather and pass on 
to the ocean, there are multitudes of arms which 



22? 



HUNTER WAS NOT NECESSARILY SERVILE. 

hail- over quiet firesides, which illustrate the deeds 
and daring and the energy of those who never shed 
human blood or heard the paeans of victory I heir 
Temple of Janus is closed for it is a time of peace, 
where neither sorrow nor the taint of battle shall 
ever rise up to darken their souls. 

In all my acquaintances with hunters I have been 
compelled to mark their defects, but there was al- 
ways a brighter side which was more or less ob- 
scured. I know of very few of them, but what if 
thev had chosen could have reached higher walks 
of life, persistently and deliberately attempted. 
Hunting was looked upon as so much of a pleas- 
ure that the immense toil and labor endured was 
not counted. To those who have brawn and mus- 
cle to use or develop what is now to take its place . 
Such must either work for themselves or work for 
others ' The latter may do and with the great 
crowd of dependents must do, but it is to the last 
a species of slavery and so far must appear debas- 
ing Master and owner are not very far apart 
in" the world's measure. To make a start is the 
struck to make the first thousand dollars is the 
tirumph. Passions are not evil when they prompt 
to good purposes, but their appeals are not mostly 
that wav, but rather for pleasure, when they are 
like water sprouts which forage upon the ascending 
sap A clothesline will hang you if you give it 
play The summons of sense bring great disquiet 
where they are not opposed. In the organic world 
success follows the line of cleavage or the line ot 
least resistance but in the human organism it is dif- 
ferent. Here dogged determination must be the 
rule The solicitations of pleasure must be an- 
swered with a frown. Barriers must be broken 
down in attack. Outposts must be set up when 



228 DON'T EXPECT TO DIG UP DIAMONDS. 

besieged ; the spy with honeyed words must be 
executed, and you must climb the hill though it 
means a Waterloo. If you frown at misfortune your 
wife will call you a blockhead and give you only 
a wooden wedding. 

Withal, be not too sanguine in the belief that 
there are acres of diamonds lying all around you. 
It is not true, it is only a rhetorical exaggeration and 
if followed will bring you disappointment. Com- 
petition is too bitter, the resources of your ances- 
tors have been already coined, and the mine is 
worked out. The reserves are put away in a 
strong box which you cannot reach. Look about 
you and you will see the holes from which your 
fortunate progenitors digged with such assiduity. 
Though you had the making of an Astor the fur 
bearers are not working night and day to .enrich 
your coffers. The construction of railways by the 
elder Vanderbilt and the wrecking of others by 
Gould brought no sinecure to their successors. The 
pioneers of Sutter's ranch left no shrub or bush 
unshaken for you to find a gold mine. Uncle Sam's 
farms are passing, the best are already gone. The 
Dantes and the Miltons, should they again appear, 
would find no new phraseology to depict Heaven or 
Hell. Wealth is cautious and conservative and its 
favors falls only to its friends. Societies will open 
the door only when you present the right key, 
without which the parlors that entertain not com- 
moners but the distinguished of every name, will 
utter, "Procul, O Procul profani." The Rose of 
Sharon is too thinly planted to make picturesque 
highways and entice you with its fragrance, "and 
utterly to destroy" means that "the Canaanite is 
still in the land," the enemy is still sowing tares 
which cannot be rooted up till the restitution of all 



THE DOG. 229 

things, and until which time there can be no sudden 
or universal return to God. The roads most trav- 
eled are those which end in a squirrel track at last 
and run up a tree. 

There is no more useful animal to the hunter 
at all times than the dog, while he is the better 
half in all warm weather shooting. Fortunately 
we had need of but four, of which only one bore 
the larger part of the burden. The first one ended 
his life on the banks of the Green River in Massa- 
chusetts, that stream which Bryant has immor- 
talized in poetry. The second was worn out and 
gave up at the mouth of the Apple River, a few 
miles above Savannah. The third was my pride 
and joy for many years, a noble dog, than which 
nothing pleased him better than the sight of a 
gun and a man to carry it. His scent was re- 
markably keen and strong. He knew everything 
that could be known about a woodcock, all that a 
dog's nature could understand. He had pointed 
out thousands of them, wondering- many times, as 
it seemed to> me, when he would turn the white 
of his eye around with so much earnestness, why I 
did not see what he saw, and smelt so keenly, and 
when at last I was compelled to order him to put 
up the bird, as it rose many times he caught it 
before it escaped from the bushes. When once 
the bird was killed he was satisfied and passed on 
for more birds, and for many a long and weary 
day he never tired out. He was equally well with 
snipe, or partridge, or quail, or grouse, but his 
long hunts were mostly with woodcock. He was 
a short, compact dog of dark color, mixed with 
white spots, a very short tail, not a very large dog, 
and a pointer. You could trust him when going 
across the country to tell you all the game that was 



230 SANCHO— THE DOG. 

within his reach. When he discovered a bird he 
would stop squarely without stirring, looking- back 
occasionally with that inquisitive eye of his to see 
if you were going to follow him. If you did not 
and he saw you were driving away, he would make 
a quick run, put up the bird he was pointing and 
then put after you with all his might to overtake 
you. This was Sancho, and his death was painful 
to me and somewhat dramatic. He was working 
closely along a high, dry ridge with the open be- 
low but bushes towering high overhead. Below 
me was an open stretch of low ground, and below 
the limbs an open space through which you could 
shoot. He found a bird and I ordered him to put 
it up. Tlhe bird, instead of springing up through 
the bushes, as they ordinarily do, dodged under the 
limbs cut into the open way and swung around to 
my left to gain the high land again. I was not 
over ten or twelve feet from the dog and as the 
bird passed in the open he came just opposite the 
dog, and my eye following the bird I did not notice 
Sancho, and the charge struck him squarely side- 
ways, and the poor brute made a low whine, try- 
ing to come to me, and fell dead. I left the place 
with a sad heart and long afterwards tried to. lo- 
cate the spot, but everything had vanished that re- 
minded me of him. He was with me five or six 
years. He lies below Cassville five or six miles, 
along a highway where the wood teams pass and 
repass every day, not far from the Milk Slough 
so often spoken of. He was nearly worn out at 
this time. The fourth and last dog was with us 
on the boat in 1871 while we were encamped op- 
posite the mouth of the Wisconsin River. I had 
shot a bird which he did not seem to find, and 
was scolding him a little when he struck and soon 



CHARACTERISTICS OF DOGS, HORSES. 231 

left me on the Island. I returned in the evening 
but saw no more of him. In the morning" we heard 
the bay of a dog and looking across the Mississippi 
we beheld him on the Southern shore of the Wis- 
consin and looking pitifully across to us. We re- 
crossed and took him back to the boat where later 
I sold him to one of the hunters and I never saw 
him again. 

There is a characteristic feature among bird dogs 
which is not easy to understand. There are times 
when they are in the best of condition, when they 
see the bird fall and rush madly after it if allowed 
and if they do not strike the scent at once they give 
a turn or two and come back discouraged. No per- 
suasion or allurement of any kind will prevail with 
them afterward. They will lead away readily to 
fresh fields or pastures new, but they will not hunt 
up the lost bird. It is not, however, a dead bird, 
but its wing is broken and the general opinion 
seems to prevail that it is able to hold back its 
scent and remains perfectly still where the bird 
falls. I have had this happen repeatedly on chick- 
ens, quails, partridges and woodcock, and it is 
most exasperating. Once at the mouth of Penny 
Slough a partridge rose up the hill and I saw him 
fall. The dog lead out after him, gave two or 
three quick turns and came back without it. The 
grass was short here and the wind blew strongly, 
which might have dissipated the scent. If the 
habits of the partridge were like that of a chicken, it 
begins to run the moment it strikes the ground, 
and if the dog starts right on its trail it will follow 
it any distance, even where the ground is bare. 
I have had my dog follow a partridge in Wiscon- 
sin for a quarter of a mile before it was overtaken, 
and walk steadily on without a break from first to 



232 CHARACTERISTICS OF DOGS, HORSES. 

last. The dog is the most devoted friend a man 
has. While attaching- himself to one man alone 
he will hunt until his feet are all worn out and 
bleeding and until he can travel no longer, but of 
all things a bird dog abhors is the presence of sand 
burrs. I had never seen any till I hunted North of 
Annawan. On those sandy hills they are in great 
profusion and were then at that time much fre- 
quented by chickens. We were not successful at 
first and my dog began to show some disappoint- 
ment when suddenly he slacked up, went slower 
and had every appearance of a horse that was 
collicky or foundered. He held his tail, not straight 
out, but circular, and he lifted his feet like they do 
when they find squirrels or a turtle. I drew up, 
supposing he had found something, but I was mis- 
taken. I remembered the city hunter who was rep- 
resented as following up a dog pointing all the 
while, upon which he cried in despair that if he 
kept up that thing all day he would get no part- 
ridges. The dog's eye was raised appealingly to- 
ward me when it flashed into my mind that he had 
struck a nest of sand burrs. I examined the dog's 
feet and all between his toes were filled in with 
them, and I had to pick them all out and leave the 
neighborhood. 

Two horses I wore out completely, one crossing 
the burning sands below Savannah on my way to 
that city yielded up his life the night after I got 
there, and the last, worn out with age and labor, 
died here in this city twenty-five years old. He 
learned to do everything a hunting horse could 
possibly do. He would see a chicken on a fence as 
quick as I would and you did not have to tell him 
when to stop, for he did that of his own accord. 
You could leave him anvwhere in the fields from 



FUTURE OF GAME AND GAME BUSINESS. 233 

nine o'clock in the morning' till six o'clock at night 
without fastening, and you would find him when 
you wanted to return home. He died at last of 
old age. 

What shall be said of the future of game and 
the game business ? In Illinois game birds are be- 
coming a thing' of the past. It seems incredible 
did we not know that the last ten years have done 
more havoc in the Hocks than the thirty years 
which preceded it. Up to 1892 or 1893 jacksnipe 
could be had almost anywhere in the spring or fall. 
We calculated there was killed in Illinois in those 
thirty years no less than two thousand dozen each 
year, and the market was large enough to take and 
consume them all at paying prices. For the same 
time there was marketed each year from Henry 
County and the Mississippi no less than three or 
four hundred dozen woodcock, and the average 
price was as high or higher than now. Quails 
were all over the state on high or low grounds, in 
the woods and in the corn fields, and were so uni- 
versal it would be difficult to give an estimate, but 
the number killed must have been very large. 
Prairie chickens have been in limited supply for 
the last thirty years, but they were never nearly as 
scarce as now, the low bottom lands being their 
only place to nest, and these overflowed with water, 
most of the covies perished. There have been very 
few grass or golden plover killed since 1880. Very 
few ducks nest here now. In the dry years very 
few are seen or killed. This year of great abun- 
dance of water, there ought to be plenty, but they 
are not. We have reason to believe they have 
emigrated with the geese and brants and cranes 
and traverse in their flights long distances to lands 
which have not been open to the hunters. To keep 



234 FUTURE OF GAME AND GAME BUSINESS. 

any appreciable amount of game in this country we 
shall have to follow the practice of English lords 
of great estates. Land in severalty of small com- 
pass will not hold birds that roam over vast acres 
and belong to no man in particular. And here 
comes in the difficulty with the law. When it is 
conceded that all the game in the State is owned 
by Government, how shall private individuals make 
their tenure good so they can hunt at will. Such 
people will be able to keep poachers off their land, 
but if they kill are they not poachers themselves? 
It would seem as though the proper way to do 
would be to give all hunters a fair chance and equal 
so long as the game would permit without destruc- 
tion, and allow it to> be shipped as long as it was 
legal to kill, when all the rights of citizens in dis- 
tant states would be protected. It would only be 
proper to throw the law open once in quite distant 
years when the supply of game would not be in- 
terferred with because the flocks would not stand 
constant or yearly pursuit. 

The rage for hunting seems to have gone be- 
yond all reasonable bounds. It has always been 
believed that the scarcer the game the less the de- 
mand would be made upon it. A hunt that would 
bring in two or three dozen birds was supposed to 
have no allurements where it was reduced to two or 
three, but the fact remains that the enthusiasm is 
unabated where men hunt for sport, and actually 
the value of the game killed is often less than the 
cost of killing. Men are getting used to small 
bags and they do not weep over the expected. In 
New York State the killing of one or two woodcock 
a day was not discouraging and to kill three or four 
or more was an eye-opener. The man that shoots 
for profit cannot work himself down to this low 



FUTURE OF GAME AND GAME BUSINESS. 235 

average. Consequently he is not a factor when 
scarcity is apparent or prices are low. It would 
seem that laws could be made according to the 
promise of the crop every few years, in which every 
man that chose could share. It might be proper 
to have open season most every year if the killing 
was allowed and followed at the proper time and 
then only, but no prairie chicken should be killed 
in Illinois until October, and even November would 
be preferable. When the corn fields are bare and 
the snow is piling up in the meadows and swirling 
along the valleys, not many birds would be reached. 
It might be proper to kill them until February and 
nothing would suffer. The question might be 
raised whether the summer shooting has not done 
more harm than all the laws have done good. The 
killing of summer birds has run into the millions 
in Iowa and Nebraska and Minnesota, and in Illi- 
nois has approximated a ratio nearly as great. 
There has been no real winter shooting in Illinois 
for thirty years. Then all the surplus has been 
drawn off in warm weather and a large share of it 
was lost or damaged. Let us get at the cause where 
it lies and not charge it up to professional hunters 
who are seldom interested because it is unprofita- 
ble. Look at the crowds of hunters and dogs that 
sally forth every first day of September in the 
chicken states, and tell us if it is not remarkable 
that any birds remain there at all. Don't tell us 
of the noble sport enjoyed by these knights of the 
gun, when, oh ye lawmakers, it is nothing short of 
murder. We often hear it remarked by young 
Nimrods, and older ones as well, that it is highly 
objectionable to shoot birds sitting, but it is rather 
commendable to flush them first and give them some 
chance to escape. Their theory is untenable, un- 



236 FUTURE OF GAME AND GAME BIRDS. 

less while they slaughter young birds by the thou- 
sand in hot weather, too small to take care of 
themselves, they can show it is merciful. It is a 
fraud upon legislators to permit such laws to pass. 
What a cry is raised over the destruction of whole 
broods of quails, sometimes, and at some fortunate 
shot. Nevertheless, the same persons will sally out 
where a flock is known to use and kill two or three, 
or perhaps half a dozen, rest awhile, then pursue 
them again a few days later till every bird is gone. 
I well remember a hawk which had marked a flock 
of quails on the bank of a stream, and made a dash 
among them every day or two, capturing one at a 
time till the whole brood disappeared long before 
spring. It is a persistent following of the flock, 
whether one or more is killed at a time, that wipes 
out the brood. The hunter for profit does not do 
this. If he gets among them he probably kills half 
the flock at the first onset, then passes to other 
grounds that have not been disturbed. He can 
no more think of spending his time upon rem- 
nants of flocks than he could expect half a meal to 
keep him alive. When the surplus has become re- 
duced he moves away. Did you ever know a 
pasteboard and gingersnap sport ever to say he had 
killed enough and would take no more. Possibly 
the law might compel them to limit their killing, 
otherwise their appetite is unsatiable. Look over 
the best hunting grounds in Henry County, the 
best that have ever existed, and I think you will 
find that if anyone has killed game illegally it has 
not been an up and down hunter who hunted for 
profit. It would not be to his interest to do so. 
From a partial comparison of quail grounds which 
have been shot over each year with those hunted 
over every other year, the number of birds killed 



CHANGED CONDITIONS ARE FATAL. 237 

in the former was noticeably no less than in the 
latter. It seems to be a law of Nature that whole 
broods do not thrive like broken ones. After a 
cold winter in which only here and there was a 
flock saved it seems remarkable how soon the hunt- 
ing was restored over large areas. The last hard 
winter we had here there was not known a single 
flock to survive. Nevertheless when spring opened 
the voice of the quail was heard in our land, and 
even now, if the old covers of grass and bushes 
could be restored, the supply would soon be in- 
exhaustible. This is the natural home of chickens 
and quail. The boom of the former was every- 
where heard on the prairies in the spring, quail 
compassed this city within half a mile, prairie 
chickens were taken plentifully where the Boss 
Works are now ; on the old cemetery grounds the 
fences were filled with them when snow flew. Quail 
roamed the streets in October and often appeared 
in the spring. Partridges flew into the houses ev- 
ery fall. Woodcock were plenty in the Blish 
woods in October. They have been known to 
feed in our dooryard. The present generation can- 
not understand this : it thinks a holiday necessary 
to find a few birds. We think because the condi- 
tions are so much changed for the worse that the 
numbers of game birds have lessened and made it 
impossible to restore them again. We shall never 
see many woodcock in this country hereafter. The 
growth of cities, the spread of railroads and the 
drainage of wet lands makes their stay impossible ; 
very few are to be found on the Mississippi at pres- 
ent. In Henry County they were practically weed- 
ed out in ten years after the hunting of them com- 
menced. On the Missouri there have never been 
many. The farthest west we ever got any number 



238 WATER AND COVER ESSENTIAL. 

was in the neighborhood of Columbus, Nebraska. 
I have searched many miles for them along the 
Missouri and never flushed one, but there are cer- 
tainly some there. The Mississippi is slowly dry- 
ing up 3 as every traveler knows. The streams which 
are its natural feeders have been opened to the sun 
and evaporation and drainage have carried off the 
surplus which was meant for use all summer. The 
water sheds have augmented their capacities, the 
wooden coverts have diminished theirs. Cattle 
roam over the islands in numbers where in the 
6o's they were scarcely to be seen. Railroads travel 
the farthest limits and along the valleys on both 
sides. Hunters come from everywhere and drop 
off anywhere where birds are to be found. Egress 
and ingress are easy, and even with strict laws 
hunters get most of the game. If there was none 
killed in the South it is not certain any considera- 
ble number would breed with us during the sum- 
mer, but within the last few years hunting has 
rapidly increased in the South and in an alarming 
manner for both woodcock and snipe. Woodcock 
are especially sought after, and in the absence of 
the former the latter is taken. Woodcocks are 
confined entirely to wooded districts and they fill 
the bill so completely from their large size and 
fine quality that very few are left to return to us in 
the spring. Southern jacksnipe are uniformly poor, 
and feeding as they do on wild, uncultivated lands 
and extensive areas, they are not so easily obtained.. 
If they could be had in numbers, the Eastern mar- 
kets doubtless would take them all, where more 
northern birds and those of better flesh could not 
be had. In Illinois they will soon become so scarce 
they will cease to be hunted. With the present 
laws large fat birds ^cannot be had in the spring 



QUAIL THRIVE BEST AMONG FARMERS. 230 

when they are at their best. The 20th of April they 
begin to fatten and by the 1st of May are outlawed. 

The fall birds are mostly poor and have to be 
held for a market. Both grass and golden plover 
have disappeared from Henry County. There is no 
known country where they can be had in very great 
numbers and reached by the railroads. In Ne- 
braska the summer grass plovers have become 
scarce. Ten or twelve years ago they were plenty 
in August. If they can be had now at all it will 
be in Texas, through which they pass in October 
and November. The hope of the partridges for 
the present is in Minnesota, North Dakota and in 
Montana. Much of these states is timber land 
and if the laws which now rule were enforced the 
birds ought to increase again for some years. The 
slaughter previous to the passage of the laws was 
beyond all computation. Enough were killed in 
one year for five years till the states could endure 
it no longer. Buyers were entirely forgetful of 
their own interests. No doubt they would, if al- 
lowed, have killed every bird if they could have 
realized ten cents each. What kind of birds have 
been left in Illinois that are likely to remain with 
us? Only chickens and quail, and of the former 
only a very limited number. Some help might 
come from the laws, but the men who hunt for 
sport, under some pretext, manage largely to ig- 
nore them. All talk about preserves where no man 
with a gun, outside of the club, will be allowed or 
considered, is futile. This is Englishy enough, but 
the theory you claim to believe in will not allow 
you to take and hold the property of the govern- 
ment. 

What will become of the quail ? No doubt they 
present the most striking instance of self-protection. 



240 SPORT SO-CALLED IS IGNOBLE. 

While they have lost the bushes and fields of grass 
with heavy cover, they have taken to the corn fields 
and hedges, and are not easily driven out, and be- 
ing half domesticated they are able to nest in 
every small patch of grass or spurs of ridges near 
to dwellings and even in instances mingle with 
the fowls of the farm yard, and so in limited num- 
bers may always remain. They have continued to 
remain in the older Eastern states, although poorly 
fed and pursued with great acticity. 

The pigeons are gone, the ducks are going, there 
is no reason why they should remain. Every piece 
of wet land where a duck could be induced to tarry 
is patroled by a sentry, not with a muzzle loader or 
even with a single or double barrel, but the re- 
sources of the gun makers have been put to the 
limit to furnish a weapon that will "bark" like a 
dog all day or night, continuously if necessary, and 
whether poacher or a plunderer, whatever you 
might name him, he holds the key to the life of 
every duck that passes his neighborhood. If he gets 
sight of a duck he will shoot, and I have known 
him in his honest self-consciousness to shoot at the 
heavens and expect a duck. 

It is time now we should come to some conclu- 
sion about this exercise which is fancifully called 
sport. Is it sport or is it murder? Is it noble or 
is it ignoble? In its last analysis, the moral charac- 
ter of an act must be judged by what it does or by 
the motive that inspired it. Doubtless to kill wild 
and dangerous animals would be considered right 
even if it produced sport. The butcher strikes 
down unoffending animals, but with the purpose 
of sustaining human life. Nevertheless on some 
juries he is not permitted to serve because of his 
familiarity with blood. To kill game for market 



TAKING LIFE FOR SPORT IS BRUTAL. 241 

where the public is benefited would not be consid- 
ered an unjust act. We think young bloods who 
harness themselves up for a summer hunt where 
the market does not need the goods and no sale is 
intended of the game and where if any use is made 
of it it goes to personal friends who have very 
little need of it, it very much resembles the sport 
of the cowboys who run down the buffaloes. Doubt- 
less it was sport in their war, but the bones that 
lined the pathway of the Union Pacific were as 
eloquent as those of the Christian martyrs that lie 
on the "Alpine mountains cold." If we ever had 
a year full of bitterness and crimination of our- 
selves it was when we hunted without a purpose 
and made a holocaust of dead and dying birds. It 
is said the Roman ladies set down in the wet arena, 
slippery with the blood of those who had never 
offended them, to a magnificent supper, and greatly 
enjoyed the sport. The poor Batrachian that makes 
himself merry in the ponds when persecuted and 
stoned, has been known to say, "This may be sport 
to you, but it is death to us." To take the blood 
of any living thing, purposeless or causeless, seems 
not to belong to the nations which call themselves 
civilized. The beetle — the scarbaeus of the Egypt- 
ians — the snake, the crocodile, and other inferior ani- 
mals, to take the life of was not permitted, nor to 
be sacrificed by them. Many of the specimens were 
deposited in the tombs with the kings and queens 
of Egypt. Where courage and skill are requisite 
it may make a sport noble, but where skill alone is 
necessary, and that not of very high order, the no- 
bility wanes and the brutal remains. Let us inter- 
pret morals in a generous manner as it becomes the 
wisdom and experience of the twentieth century. 
We are not modest enough to believe what Agrippa 
said unto Paul, "Much learnino- doth make thee 



242" HUNTER FOR PROtTT HAS HAD HIS DAY. 

mad," nor with Pope, "A little learning is a dan- 
gerous thing," because really there is nothing to be 
gained by the gun any longer. You may as well 
call back the tribes of the desert, buried by the 
sands of the Sirrocco. They will not answer. 
Wealth may build for itself preserves and parks 
and the general government may make poaching 
piracy, and every authority be invoked to convert 
the broad acres of our country into an English 
manor, and the dragnet will hold nothing but 
the common quail. With the passing of the wild 
grass of the prairies grouse will linger awhile and 
be lost, or like the buffalo, exist only in a few speci- 
mens. The water birds will visit us less and less 
every year as the water courses dry up, and will 
ultimately be found only in the far North. 

The hunter for profit has had his day, the pot 
shot and the pot hunter must disappear. What 
little game remains that you can legally take will 
fall into the hands of the city sport. He will out- 
class you because he can outbuy you. To the 
farmer the lot falls of raising and protecting and 
then of forfeiting his crop by being forbidden ac- 
cess to the markets of the world. There will be no 
markets. Where there is nothing to sell there will 
be no one to buy. You cannot step into another 
State with a gun but an officer is at your heels and 
demands a license or a fine. The young man with 
blood tingling in his veins and ambitious to distin- 
guish himself in the field with dog and gun, must 
round up his energies in some other channel. Na- 
ture is lustful, ebullient, profligate, but you can 
dull the finest edge with a trifling hair, and while 
there is nothing to be gained by controversy, sub- 
mission is only the price of valor, while the killing 
of birds for sport is so brutal Christian ethics should 
make it a thesis for future orations. 



PART II. 
GAME BIRDS OF THE MIDDLE WEST. 



ENGLISH SNIPE OR JACK SNIPE. 

This little bird, commonly called by market men 
the English snipe, should more properly be called 
the American snipe, as it is much smaller than 
the English bird, but its habits and appearances, 
aside from its size, are almost identical. Among 
sportsmen it is more generally termed the jack 




English or Jack Snipe. 

snipe, and from the brevity of the word that ex- 
pression has come to be more common. We have 
no other game bird so small that has equal value 
with it, or that is so highly prized by epicures or 
lovers of ideal game. This bird is only nine to 
ten inches in length to the end of his bill, and rarely 
weighs over four ounces each. A good barrel of 

243 



244 ENGLISH SNIPE. 

fifty dqzen will seldom weigh over a hundred and 
seventy-five pounds, including the barrel of twenty 
pounds, and two hundred pounds would be consid- 
ered heavy. To obtain over that weight it would 
be necessary to have all selected birds. Neverthe- 
less some birds are obtainable in May which weigh 
close to six ounces and are as large as some wood- 
cocks. They are inhabitants of slough land and 
marshy places where they get their living by boring 
for earth worms, for which their bill is highly 
adapted, but they cannot bore in very heavy ground 
or on uplands where there are no water courses. 
Their bill is upwards of two inches in length and 
flattened toward the extremity, after which it re- 
sumes its normal shape to the end. It is noticeable 
for having a series of little dots or indentations 
where the flattening occurs, and by their presence it 
would be impossible to confound it with any other 
bird. It breeds close to its type and the varia- 
tions in color or form are few, so that a white 
feathered bird is rarely if ever seen. In general its 
back is variably dark and light, while its breast 
from the center down is nearly white. Its feet 
present long, thing, stright lines, and the impres- 
sions are often prominent and noticeable in muddy 
places, and are only distinguished bv their length 
from the rail, which feeds also in low, marshy 
grounds, but with more frequent spots of water. 
This bird traverses the whole of North America, 
on the Sea Coast, on the Rivers, on the Plains, 
where there is much water. Up to the shores of 
the Arctic Ocean, in the Savannahs of the South, 
by the affluents of the Gulf of Mexico, by the land- 
locked streams which appear with the rains of 
spring and shrink away in the summer. Always a 
wanderer, coming and going within certain dates 



ENGLISH SNIPE. 245 

which seem to mark its passage north or south, 
shunning travel by day and eager to dash in at 
night where no sign has appeared the day before, 
the most determined and inexplicable little for- 
eigner, without a country, but ready to naturalize 
himself wherever he makes his home. In spite of 
all the array of guns which come down from the 
walls to meet him and the steady tramp of veterans 
who know his voice as well as that of the brant 
and geese of the Spring, and salute him as they 
would a lost brother, with such fearful carnage, he 
never falters. With what magic does he rise up 
and utter "s-c-a-p-e," gives a few lunges in a 
zigzag fashion, and darts off in a straight line and 
sinks" behind some clump he has noticed, or dips 
off suddenly into the flags. He may settle in the 
marsh where the water is too deep for you, or he 
may whirl around into the air, gather up one or 
two or more companions, and sail away, perhaps a 
mile or more, before he alights again. When the 
grass is short he is very wary but as it lengthens 
late in April and makes a shade for him you may 
walk past him within a few feet and he not take 
wing. He may drop down into a wagon track, 
entirely oblivious of you, or a cow track may form 
him a cover. His eye is very large and bright and 
he notices your every movement. If he thinks he 
is discovered he is up and away. He may some- 
times be seen walking about in places where he is 
not much hunted. In back fields by small streams 
he may reveal himself at his own sweet will, cours- 
ing the ground and taking a snap at the worms be- 
low which furnish him his meal. In the Spring 
time on his arrival, if it be a cloudy day, he wiil 
rise high into the air and deliver his love notes, 
which can be heard for miles, whirling around in 



246 ENGLISH SNIPE. 

circles of lesser or greater diameter, then suddenly 
dropping towards the earth with the velocity of a 
hurricane. He will pour forth a torrent of sound 
with his wings resembling the scooping notes of 
a sky rocket, dying away in softer measures like a 
horn. Sometimes in company with ten or twelve 
others he comes down suddenly from a cloudless 
sky, the first of the season, in the day time. He is 
a rare judge of feeding grounds. Not every spot 
which holds water will hold him. He discovers 
the nature of the soil long distances, he will not 
tolerate cold, clammy bottoms. If he discovers a 
strip of fertile lands adjoining plowed fields where 
the worms have got in, he selects it and will have 
no other. On open tracts of rich soil without cover 
he will often tarry, but likes cover better. Where 
the grass is mowed short he passes it by. Where 
corn fields adjoin he will fly there for shelter. He 
will remain away in some secluded place after he 
has been once flushed for hours, and will only re- 
turn at nightfall. He likes community but not 
company. He is the prince of open lands as the 
woodcock is prince of the woods. The first of May 
the female begins to< nest. When it is finished and 
the eggs laid the old note ceases, the voice it utters 
is coarser and deeper, sounding more like "c-a-r-k" 
than "scape." It lays four eggs, mostly light 
brown, but speckled and tawny, and deeper stained 
at the larger end. When the season for shooting 
is past he is gone. By the tenth of May a rain 
storm may come on and carry him you know not 
whither, and he will not reappear before August, 
and not then if the Summer is dry. When he re- 
turns he is in poor flesh and only in favorite places 
does he regain the good condition he had in the 



ENGLISH SNIPE. 247 

Spring before he is ready for his trip South in 
November. 

Jack snipe usually arrive in the Spring about 
April ist, sometimes they are as late as the twen- 
tieth, if cold weather sets in or snow falls heavily 
when they arrive. In that case they are liable to 
remain late South and not stop in Illinois at all. 
The earliest birds ever known to arrive was in 1879, 
when they appeared quite plenty west of Annawan 
March 7th. Hunting of them successfully is quite 
a science. In windy days hunters have learned to 
beat down the wind, when the birds will rise up- 
wards and give you a good shot. There is no 
country where greater bags have been made than 
in Henry County. Many times have one hundred 
been taken in a day and exceeded. In one case a 
hundred and thirty were killed in one day with a 
muzzle loader on Mud Creek. Southern Illinois 
was a fruitful haunt for them many years. The 
Carlyle Bottoms were famous. In Missouri, along 
the Chariton Bottoms, immense numbers were 
killed. At Beardstown and Burlington thousands 
were shipped. Only in the last ten years have the 
numbers commenced to fall off. You will not now 
collect in the whole State of Illinois as many as we 
used to get in one week in Henry County in i860. 

The travel of this bird in the Spring from the 
far South is in the nature of a romance. For many 
months he has fed at the Gulf, he may have trav- 
ersed the Isthmus. He hears the beating of the 
Pacific, he covers the foorsteps of Balboa. Behind 
him the Summer, before him the screech of the 
wild fowl opening up the frozen fastnesses of the 
North. Enwrapped in the clouds of the night he 
plunges into the airy abyss. Headland and Main- 
land vanish before him. Turbulent rivers and 



248 ENGLISH SNIPE. 

mountain ranges disappear as if by magic. Rising 
cities throw out a line of light. To-day he feeds 
in the cotton fields, to-night he will be beyond the 
black belt of the bondman. The constellations with 
their jewelled fingers, open up the gateway of the 
Mississippi, he enters the vortex of commerce, he 
follows the coast line. He feels the breath of 
Spring wrestling with the chill of winter. Far be- 
low is the mad rush of bursting floods which in- 
creasing warmth has melted from their icy chains. 
Only the stars above him twinkle and are still. They 
are his handmaids, they are the lamps of Heaven. 
If he were in doubt of his way they would befriend 
him. With his practiced eye they are visible in the 
day time. He may hear far away the notes of the 
Angelic Choir. If he were a bird of song he could 
enter the gates. There is a power 

"That guides his way along that unseen coast, 
The desert and the illimitable air, 
Lone wandering but not lost."' 

The wav shortens, he is nearins: the end. An 
indefinable sense of joy gladdens his bosom as the 
sun breaks forth and gilds anew the land of prom- 
ise. It suffuses his being. The throbbings of pa- 
rental love now surpass all his other passions. He 
sees beyond the little nest with the helpless ones, 
and with increasing delight he flies forward. To- 
morrow he will rest in the summer land and the 
home which will make him a heaven. 

The American woodcock is the most charming 
game bird we have in our country. He is also 
some smaller than his English congener, but his 
nature and habits and general appearance are also 
very similar. Like the snipe, he is a bird of pas- 
sage, and though he will endure some cold weather, 



WOODCOCK. 249 

both in coming early and returning late, he is sel- 
dom to be seen here after the middle of November 
or earlier than the first of April preceding. After 
a late snow in April you will often see his track 
along coverts of thick bushes which border timber 
lands, and by going a few steps you will easily 
flush him for he is not a wanderer after he reaches 
his summer home. His track is as smooth as 
though pressed in molten glass and the steps pre- 




Woodcock. 

cede one another with the precision of a square or 
a plumb. The impression he makes is broader than 
that of a snipe and he is a much heavier bird. 
When he is in full flesh he is considered to weigh 
on an average about half a pound, but there are 
cases on record where he has reached three-quar- 
ters of a pound if not more. In October he is 
heavier than in Spring or Summer, and a barrel of 
birds in the Fall will usually weigh something be- 
tween the two figures. He wastes very little in 



250 WOODCOCK. 

dressing, because he does not have a crop. His 
breast bone is thinner than a knife blade and all the 
exigencies of digestion are reduced to a minimum by 
the food he eats. Beneath his feet roam the slimy 
creatures which are to manufacture muscle for him- 
self and pleasure for gourmands. His legs are re- 
markably large so that his rise is active and springy. 
His nest is formed from April ist to July and in 
instances until late in September, but usually the 
young is nearly enough advanced to fly well by the 
twentieth of June. In one instance I killed a young 
bird the first of October barely large enough to fly 
and not yet full feathered. Likewise I raised a 
bird from his nest on the hillside along Green River 
the first day of April immediately following a heavy 
freeze, the nest containing the full number of eggs. 
But in June I have often driven them off their nest, 
while for the most part the flocks were grown and 
able to fly. Their nest is on higher ground than 
that of a snipe in most cases but I have found them 
on the river bottom where the rise of water would 
entirely overflow them. Their nest contains the 
same number of eggs as a snipe, four in number, 
and similarly spotted brown. The color of the bird 
is nutty brown, lighter on the breast and darker and 
mottled on the back and head. When he starts to 
rise and expands his wing and tail he is the most 
perfect picture of beauty ; he is the flower of the air. 
The snipe is a pansy, the woodcock the rose of 
summer. The tail coverts with their ring of charm- 
ing white when expanded represent the blossom. 
With what beautiful lines does he suggest rhythm 
of movement as he clears the bushes, the tree-tops, 
and beats his way with a cadence of flapping wings 
until he has crossed the sunlight and enters the shad- 
ows again. You have lost him for awhile, You may 



WOODCOCK. 251 

be able to find him not very far away. He sits in 
cover if cover can be found. He does not make 
merry in the sunlight. He seldom takes to the open 
fields. Love is an inhabitant of the rocks but he of 
the woods. With that marvelous eye of his he will 
see where men stagger. He is the" most sagacious 
bird in existence. Where the galinaceous birds will 
take to the wing he sits quietly. He is the cock of 
the woods. If by chance you should see him alight 
and should follow him up intently he knows your 
purpose in a moment. He is not going to make a 
confidant of you, he will rise again before you are 
in reach, and he will continue to rise as long as you 
will follow him and worry him. But oh, young 
sport, beware, do not tempt him that way. Mark 
where he lighted and go thy way, he will not run 
away. He will not of his own will leave his seclud- 
ed cover until nightfall. He, too, is gregarious, he 
has some near relation not far away. You may pur- 
sue them for awhile and then come back. He now 
thinks you have given up the chase. His fear is 
now vanished. He believes from his escape so long 
you will not again find him. He is to all purposes 
now the same bird as though you had never forced 
him to rise. Your dog is coursing around and he 
now scents him readily. He draws up slowly, your- 
self directly behind him. Where now are your eyes, 
why can't you see him ? You begin to measure the 
ground inch by inch. You are certain as the dog 
hesitates he must not be six feet .awav, but oh, your 
eyes are blurred. There is a watery 'channel where 
the tears gather and you wipe the mist away. "Oh," 
you think rapidly, "if I could only see that bird'l 
would shave his head off in an instant." You want 
him, you are not debating how you may get him nor 
what he is worth, but you want him, and so the plot 



252 WOODCOCK. 

thickens. Your dog turns up the white of his eye 
appealingly and cynically seems to mock you. You 
wait a moment. You will order him to> "Put it up" 
if the bird does not rise soon, or you do not see 
him. Wonder of wonders, your eye now strikes his. 
With his color so similar to that of the ground you 
had overlooked it. Your fingers feel the trigger. 
The stock seems to be loose and shaky in your hand 
and its throbbings pass all over you, but oh, up goes 
the bird, with the velocity of a torrent he arises, 
shakes the bushes behind him and climbs the height 
of the limbs above. Now all your skill is to be 
tested. The moment he passes the top of the limbs 
he will be out of your sight. You make a fair shot, 
but you are nervous, your shot spreads but little, 
you shoot too quickly, or too late, and you miss him 
perhaps by an inch. He is out of your field of 
vision, or perhaps as you fired you lost sight of him. 
Or the limbs and leaves come raining down, there is 
a touch of sunlight, and on top of the leaves comes 
down your bird. If you miss him, he goes ten or 
twelve rods, then descends again, makes a sharp, 
straight line through the clearing, passes a thick 
clump of wavy bushes and congested limbs, turns 
suddenly to the left around a thick cover and drops 
down again within, when you may repeat the same 
process as before. If you hit him fairly well he 
comes down with a broken wing or perhaps with it 
cut off entirely, or you macerate his head and the 
mangled body falls into your hands all the same. 
The woodcock by a system of telepathy which you 
cannot understand, divined your intentions in a mo- 
ment when he rose into the air, never stopping to 
inquire whether they were good or bad. This is his 
security that he knows how to lie still when he 
thinks he is not seen. I know I have passed within 



WOODCOCK. 253 

a few feet of many a bird and yet neither myself 
nor dog was able to discover him, either when en- 
tirely unhurt or crippled. They will sometimes al- 
low you to put your feet squarely on the bog where 
they* sit and only start up when the grass brushes 
against them, the sagacity of the bird is further 
shown by their care for their young. Many times 
when hunting on the Mississippi, we have landed on 
an Island that had until within a few days been 
entirely covered with water, and the woodcocks 
were there and young birds that could not fly. This 
wonder for a long time we were unable to dispel, 
till one day on the Rock River, just above the Rail- 
road Bridge at Colona, I was beating the bushes 
south, and before I got fairly where I expected to 
find the birds, and talking sharply to my dog, I ob- 
served a woodcock coming out of the brush towards 
me with his legs hanging down and a big bunch of 
something held between his thighs, as it appeared 
to me, and I thought it very strange, because wood- 
cocks do not move of their own accord in the sun- 
light and in the heat of the day. It was a female 
bird which made a peculiar noise with its bill very 
similar to their love notes in the spring, and I let the 
bird 'go till I could ascertain more about it. I went 
directly into the bush and she followed me and flew 
around me several times, and there I found all the 
birds of a brood but one, none of them able to fly, 
but a few feet, and the bird was evidently on the 
point of taking another in her feet and carrying it 
away. A chicken or a quail under such circum- 
stances would flutter around and make a great dis- 
play of anguish, but I never knew one of them to 
seize the young and carry it away to save it. 

It has been said that woodcock never alights in a 
tree. Old hunters always repeat this story. Most 



254 woodcock:. 

game will alight in a tree when occasion serves, the 
quail, chicken and partridge being fond of so doing, 
but across the River from Savannah, in one of those 
dry, hot summers, I discovered a woodcock sitting 
on a stump and bowled him off, and although I had 
been shooting close by for an hour he did not appear 
to have been frightened. 

At the mouth of Green River in the '6o's, there 
was quite a body of woods, most of it on pretty 
high ground. I commenced the middle of June to 
shoot woodcock there and most of the birds lay 
along the muddy banks of the stream or in the 
sloughs that put back therefrom. I did not find as 
many birds as I had expected, and I followed back 
from the bed of the River a short distance to see 
if they had not flown into cover there, when sud- 
denly I discovered a bird flying from the River 
towards me. I followed it up and killed it and 
started back to find whence it came. As I did so I 
passed a tree with its top broken off about twelve or 
fifteen feet from the ground. I heard the call of a 
woodcock, and looking up from the point of the 
stump, a whole brood, one excepted, the old b^ird 
and her young ones, came down and I got most or 
all of them. 

When these birds arrive in the spring they select 
their summer home contiguous to some swampy 
bottom, well watered and interspersed with trees, 
and soon commence their airy flights as evening 
comes on, rising often to great distances, and after 
circling around a few times, singing their love notes 
slowly and with sliding motion, they suddenly start 
into more rapid movements. The circles are dimin- 
ished. Their notes are quickened and more liquid 
and delivered with great frequency till the syllables 
seem to overlap each other in their haste to escape. 



WOODCOCK. 255 

The wings quiver and beat the air with tremulous 
motion, and the bird poises in its flight and comes 
down to the earth like an arrow and if you happen 
to be beneath him, you are in danger that he will 
strike you squarely on the head, but usually he 
turns aside, picks himself up on a bog and utters 
"s-p-a-t-e." I have often marked their descent and 
wondered how closely they came to you without 
quite reaching you. They will generally alight with- 
in a rod or two of you. At such times they will 
continue to utter their pass word for many minutes 
before they rise again. On my neighbor's farm in 
New York State, there was a side hill covered with 
short, stubby bushes and this was a favorite resort 
for these birds. They sat there during the day time 
and at nightfall would rise up and whirl around in 
the adjoining pasture, and many times I tried to 
intercept them as they rose, but never succeeded. 
One night I followed them back into the field and 
killed it under the hickory tree as I have described. 
I was as proud of that feat as I would have been in 
war to take the scalp of an Indian. It was no use 
to me, except the small taste I got when it was 
cooked, and it was fine, but it was on a par with 
much of the hunting that is practiced at this day. 
To kill a deer may be sport, or a bear in the wilds 
of Minnesota or Mississippi, may be noble, but I 
cannot help think it smacks of bloodthirstiness and 
in the end is brutal and cruel, always barring the 
extermination of wild animals when necessary, and 
your own need or choice of the means of support. 
We think the toreador who goes into the bull fights 
of Spain or Mexico to appease the cry of the popu- 
lace for blood differs only in degree not quality from 
the hunter that pursues wild birds merely for sport. 
The passions in either become whetted and ferocious. 



266 WOODCOCK. 

They are like milestones which, within bounds, lead 
to the Holy City, but if you will not stop there, there 
is music and dancing- beyond where revelry sits in the 
seat of the scornful, and in the end "In Memoriam" 
crowns the last milestone. When in 1850 Carlyle 
began to develop his Thesis that real health and 
strength were always "unconscious," he roused the 
British lion to say, "What — do you think I am no 
longer to be rampant but couchant. Fie on you, 
Scotchman !" Nevertheless, this led to reverse the 
hostile attitude of Britain and open the way for 
bloodless victories to follow. 

The bill of the woodcock is a marvel of adapta- 
bility. It is heavier and stronger than that of the 
snipe. It gradually decreases from its initial junc- 
tion at the base of the bill and continues to lessen in 
thickness until it reaches the end. The muscular 
power in the bill of the woodcock is immense. While 
the bird feeds in soft and moist places, like the 
snipe, it is not confined thereto. The feathers that 
fringe the edge of the bill are often found covered 
with mud, but in places where no water is formed 
beneath forest trees where the sun does not pene- 
trate, or in corn fields, it feeds often with equal 
facility. It will feed on dry ground, where when its 
bill is removed, the space fills up with dropping soil. 
When traveling North or South it will often stop 
at night in some old pasture, many individuals often 
in company, and probe the ground with holes for a 
large area, till they take their flight again. In 
rapidity of flight they are said to equal all other 
birds. It not infrequently dashes itself to death 
against some sharp obstacle which it cannot avoid. 
I once picked up a bird on the railroad track just 
out of Kewanee with its breast pierced through with 
a thorn. Where there are mountain sides no height 



woodcock:. 25? 

for them is inaccessible. I have shot them in the 
Fall on the top of the highest mountains in Eastern 
New York. Once in pursuit of a partridge on a 
ledge hundreds of feet from the valley going sheer 
down its precipitous sides I rose a woodcock and 
killed it and in its fall it fell nearly a hundred feet 
below me. The scent of the woodcock is very 
strong. Any good dog will take it readily and the 
scent is not always dissipated when the bird leaves. 
In favorite places the dog' will take it on the mor- 
row following. It will last longer than that of any 
other bird. Not even a quail or a partridge will 
remain fresh from one day to another. This is par- 
ticularly true where the bird has fed over night. In 
the morning before dawn he may pass to a new 
country and your dog draw as for a fresh bird, and 
not know he is gone. 

The prairie chicken or prairie hen, as it is some- 
times called, is the most valuable species of game 
we have in Illinois. Not only does it possess the 
flavor which many housewives seem to covet, but 
its large size places it in the list of eatables not very 
expensive when the bird breeds plentifully and the 
laws permit its capture, but undoubtedly the limit 
of production has been reached and passed here and 
those that expect to partake of it, will often have to 
go beyond the Missouri. There is always a com- 
parison to be reckoned with between the amount of 
game at any time to be had and the increase and the 
spread of population when game is to be used as a 
food product. Forty years ago prairie chickens 
went begging in this town at one dollar per dozen 
in summer, and two dollars in winter and none 
seemed to care to buy. The population was from 
one thousand to fifteen hundred, and the only avenue 
to wealth and prosperity was to wring- it from the 



258 



PRAlRiE CHICKEN. 



soil. Manufacturing had not come in. Million- 
aires, if there were any, were then far back in the 
Eastern States, or possibly in Chicago. There was 
too much water here to advance fortunes out of it, 
and those that had the greed did not think they felt 
the need. At that time the prairies were alive with 
chickens. If their nesting grounds had not been 
desolated by fire and they had been allowed to in- 
crease to their natural limit the corn fields of Illi- 
nois could not have fed them all. It was no uncom- 




Prairie Chicken. 



O ^*Z1^Z 



mon thing to see whole corn fields overrun and 
ruined by them in the 6o's. Ducks and geese and 
cranes stalked all along the low bottoms of Mud 
Creek and the marshes about Annawan and Rock 
River, but they were wilder and presented no com- 
parison in their destructive character to the thou- 
sands of prairie chickens. The wild fowl remained 
a month and passed away. Prairie chickens sat 
down by a corn field and ruined it much as the bar- 
barians crowded around a fortified city for plunder. 



PRAIRIE CHICKEN. 259 

Many a time have we been offered free feed for our- 
self and horse if we would come and hunt them 
out. In 1855 and '56 we killed a great many and 
was glad to receive $1.50 per dozen for them and 
carry them twenty miles to market. In the summer 
of that year all the towns we visited had vast sec- 
tions of undeveloped prairies around them. Here 
the birds grew and multiplied. Within two or three 
miles of as large a city as Peru the hunting was 
splendid. The turnpikes were just being laid out 
and travel was exceedingly difficult where they were 
not. During every little rain the roads were quag- 
mired. Many wayside places seemed to be cut off 
from the towns. There was a dearth of activity 
and here the broods grew and spread. Population 
rapidly increased until the Civil War but the broods 
fell back and the numbers were not shortened or 
decimated as they have been since. We have al- 
ready noted how in 1865 invention and the progress 
of wealth swung ahead, but until it laid its hands 
on the farms there was no perceptible diminution 
in the numbers of prairie chickens. In the '6o's 
you could go out on a hillside and pick up the eggs 
as plentifully as you would gull's eggs in the 
Falerones. Then the farmers set themselves to 
burning over the old grass and increasing their 
farms and continued to do so till there was no grass 
to burn and no farms to buy. Do you think the 
hunters killed the birds? I tell you, nay. What 
was three or four thousand chickens to take out of 
two or three adjoining counties in this state during 
the whole of one year. There were at that time 
hillsides where one hundred to five hundred eggs 
was no great collection to pick up in less than half 
a mile. In LaSalle County I could kill a hundred 
chickens a day, but the more I killed the worse it 



260 PRAIRIE CHICKEN. 

was, for all the farmers in the neighborhood could 
not consume them and would not even though they 
cost them nothing. Now let us remember that the 
broods then were very large, seldom less than 
twelve to fifteen birds, and they were everywhere on 
the prairie stretching away miles upon miles and 
when I could give away no more, I saw in October 
more birds rise out of a forty acre field than all the 
cities in the Union could consume in a month. 
Don't you suppose that if all those birds had had a 
chance to breed the year following and their nests 
been protected from fire or the rapine of egg hunters 
and so continued, there would have been sufficient 
to supply every family today with a reasonable 
amount of game. Continue this increase for an- 
other year and all the hunters in Christendom. would 
have been unable to shake them out. I never hunted 
that land again, neither anyone else for market pur- 
poses that I know of, and you might now search it 
over through corn field and prairie and back to the 
city, and you would not find a baker's dozen to pay 
you for your pains. If the prairie chickens could 
not survive hunting of that sort when it raises 
twelve or fifteen young at a time, how are the snipe 
and woodcock with broods of only four to escape, 
and these you must remember have their feeding 
grounds always restricted far beyond anything com- 
parable to theirs. 

From 1870 to 1880 the flocks did not show any 
apparent diminution. They were already so reduced 
in size and numbers, that their pursuit was unprofit- 
able, and though many hundreds were killed in 
August very few, if any, after December, and the 
supply gradually increased all through the Fall by 
accessions from Iowa, which could constantly be 
seen crossing the Mississippi. But these are in- 



PRAIRIE CHICKEN. 261 

superable problems, and the farmer who certainly 
owns the land if he does not the birds, is not going 
to sow for another to reap. This state has ceased 
to be the hunters' paradise and it will remain so be- 
cause the greater value for farming will swallow 
up the lesser for sport. When we come to examine 
the characteristics of the bird in detail we shall feel 
friendly toward him and regret his departure. He 
is emphatically the pride of the prairies. He is of 
noble presence. His size is so great and he stands 
so squarely on his feet you can but admire him. The 
feathers on his breast are beautifully barred. He is 
clothed to his toes. He is made to withstand all the 
vicissitudes of climate. The brown covering of 
feathers on his back and the motley markings make 
him undistinguishable whenever he sits down. Un- 
der his neck is a yellow stripe which aids his beauty. 
H : is wings are powerful propellers, he disdains short 
flights. He may wing away a mile or more at a 
stretch when pursued, or travel many miles for a 
new home. He will cross great rivers. He will 
enter foreign states when his food supply is short- 
ened or fails. In April or the beginning of May 
the hen builds her nest. She lays twelve to fifteen 
eggs at a sitting and often raises two broods when 
one is destroyed. 

The male is a grand picture when he begins his 
courtship. If you will observe him on his "booing" 
grounds in the spring he makes his nobility known 
in a superb way. The bright yellow that blazes over 
his eyes is his badge of royalty, it is the button of 
Prince Chuan, it is the love token which now in- 
flames him and which he will lay aside later when 
he shall take his mate to his heart. With a little 
coterie of ten or twelve he is making a parade. 
Within a circle of ten or twelve feet every member 



262 PRAIRIE CHICKEN. 

is his own master. He is not a poacher. If his 
neighbor intrudes he pursues him, if he resists he 
indulges in a short passage at arms, jumping up 
and down, giving a vicious peck or two and then 
separating, he goes back to his circle and begins to 
inspect it with great particularity. He travels round 
the circumference, his neck expands, the feathers 
part and reveal a line of flame, the ear feathers 
spring out like spears. With his head close to the 
ground and his short tail thrown forward he is the 
picture of rage. And now commences a "boo" 
which seems to spring out of his mouth like that of 
a boy blowing bubbles. It is the soft, voluptuous 
strain of the male, with notes as full and swell as 
grand and elastic as Holiday chimes, pouring forth 
in one concerted peal the ecstacy and exhilaration of 
his soul. He seems to have no purpose in this dis- 
play but to charm his mate. Unlike the partridge, 
the vibrations are softer and continuous, but they 
reach long distances. This is the only season of the 
year when he appears in full dress and cares to be 
seen. At a distance he appears to move tail fore- 
most for his tail overshadows his head and breast. 
He is still wary. Advance and he moves away, 
return and he returns. Every day in March or 
April he will retake his ground and repeat his 
tactics. 

When the eggs are laid then the familiar sound 
of the "booing" ceases. You may inquire for him 
but you will not find him. He is not making calls 
and he does not appear in public. He has taken into 
his company several others like himself and gone 
into bachelor quarters. In some remote field by 
some shadowy maze of bog- or slough grass along 
which you may be hunting for snipe, you will find 
him, If water abounds or a little pond lies near 



PRAIRIE CHICKENJS HE NATIVE OR NOT? 263 

along which a new growth of grass is forcing its 
way through the old sod yellow with summer 
growth, you will raise him every few rods. He is 
now very gentle. He will seldom rise over a few 
rods away, and the amateur sportsman is terrified 
at the thought of letting him escape. He wonders 
why birds have become so plenty, more so than ever 
before and he inwardly resolves he will return some 
summer day and make a wonderful bag. 

When in city or village he confidentially informs 
his friends that he has found a place where chickens 
are very thick and when the time comes he will 
show them what he can do. Alas, Summer comes. 
He clothes himself as lightly as possible, for is he 
not going to have a big day's sport? He hardly 
takes time for a lunch, but hurries on out to the 
country to the place of his choice. He beats right 
and left, he urges on his dog, he courses through 
tangles of summer growth of vines and weeds. He 
wipes the sweat from his brow, but the birds do not 
rise. There is a sense of weariness. The worry 
and disappointment accelerates it, and the long day 
sweeps on unmindful of the meager stores which 
supply his midday meal. He goes home wiser and 
lighter than he planned in the spring, and wonders 
what has become of all the birds he saw there be- 
fore. The wise hunter must learn to change his 
tactics for any kind of game and pursue it in differ- 
ent localities whenever they change, and he who will 
not will be hopelessly left when he counts up his 
returns. 

There is a question often raised as to whether the 
prairie chickens were native to this country, and if 
so, how did they support themselves before the 
country was settled and corn fields came in. We do 
not know, but we have it from good authority that 



264 PRAIRIE CHICKENS. PIN TAILS. 

our present birds were once natives of Pennsylvania 
and did not feed in corn fields. In those great bar- 
rens on the hillside, where the charcoal burners 
lived, the bird was native and got his living by 
budding. Any man who has hunted chickens in the 
winter with a sled, knows that prairie chicken is 
partial to feed of that kind here. Apple buds are 
his favorite but he will not go unfed where other 
buds are to be found, any more than will the par- 
tridge. It has been our experience on more than 
one occasion to find a flock of prairie chickens 
alighted on the ground in the thick wood and evi- 
dently displaying their former and normal traits by 
budding. 

I stated in the beginning of this article that the 
large size of this bird made him a general favorite 
for family as well as for the cook. One bird will 
make a meal for a small family, two will suffice for 
a large one, and only the delicate connoisseur or 
gourmand will take exceptions to its quality as be- 
ing much inferior to woodcock or quail. Prairie 
chickens full grown, weigh on an average about two 
pounds. If packed in small boxes they weigh two 
and a half pounds by the box. If in barrels of forty 
or fifty pair each they run about two and a quarter 
pounds. There is not much difference in weight 
whether they come from Nebraska, Minnesota, Illi- 
nois or Iowa. There is a pin tailed grouse which 
very much resembles prairie chicken, which is 
slightly smaller and sometimes has been known to 
mix in with our home birds. In this case the family 
resemblance of both parents is marked and there is 
no appreciable difference in weight. These come 
mostly from Nebraska. They flourish best in hilly 
country, and among the sand hills of Western Ne- 
braska they are very common. They do not come 



KANSAS PRAIRIE CHICKEN. 265 

down to the corn fields until late in the season, and 
the neighborhood of Johnstown, Nehr., seems to be 
the dividing line. West of it the pintails, and East 
of it the prairie chickens. In Minnesota and the 
Dakotas and in wooded countries the pintails are 
more plenty. In this state there have been none 
seen since 1870. Previous to that date they were 
occasionally killed. In Montana also the pintails 
prevail. In Kansas we have a smaller prairie 
chicken, being similar to our home birds, but not 
much over half the size. When the full sized bird 
can be found they are not much sought after and 
their value is proportionally less. 

The prairie chicken covers a wide scope of coun- 
try, beginning with Indiana it follows Westward to 
the Plains. It does not go South of Illinois and is 
scarcer as you proceed South. It prevails North- 
ward in the Dakotas and Minnesota, till it comes in 
contact with the pintail which sometimes displaces 
it. It does not occur in Montana. In Iowa, Nebras- 
ka and Indian Territory is his settled home. The 
small grouse occur in Texas as well as Kansas. 

Whoever saw a live partridge for the first time 
and does not remember it? If you have been in the 
woods and one sprung suddenly from beneath your 
feet, the memory of it will be a silken thread which 
shall join you to the few and loving surprises which 
have come to you from the country, from the woods 
and waterfalls and painted in glowing colors the 
ambitions of travel. If you have followed him fur- 
ther over hill and dale, have heard the rush of his 
wings many times till it became like a twice told 
tale without emotion, have heard him tap his heart 
beats to his mate on a broken log, and have dwelt on 
the many artifices which he employs to lead you 
away from his home and his loved ones, and have 



266 



PARTRIDGE. 



not felt a thrill of delight, then Nature's beautiful 
purposes of adaptation you have lost. The partridge 
is essentially a bird of the woods as the prairie 
chicken is of the prairies. You can drive him from 
his home and he will take to the fields but he is not 
to the manor born. He is familiar with the thickets, 
he disports many hours among the tree tops, living 
or dead. Some cover he must have or he will not 
stay. He essays to find his way through briars and 
brambles. If he has found a wild grape vine with 
fruit he will come morning and night for his food 




though it has cost him a weary flight to do so. The 
bitter sweet vine with its red clusters is a favorite, 
and in the last recourse when all else fails him he 
will take to the buds. In the Northwest there is a 
tree which bears clusters of long pendants similar to 
the black alders of the East and with these he can 
fill himself in short order. In the older states East 
he was in the habit in my early days of coming to 
the apple orchards and feeding there. Just at night- 
fall the whirr of his wiugs could be heard as he left 
the bushes and swamps and started for the tree tops. 



PARTRIDGE. 267 

With what avidity he snapped off the buds when he 
came. Sometimes in heavy falls of snow he would 
sit content among the limbs of the orchard all day 
long where no enemy was known or noticed. 

The color of the partridge is light brown on the 
back and neck interspersed w r ith lighter spots vary- 
ing greatly with the location, and it is believed with 
the age of the bird. The entire plumage may run 
thro' all the colors from a light brown or grey on 
the back to a deep yellow on the tail, and from 
brown and white spots on the breast to a color 
nearly white. The ends of the tail feathers are 
beautifully barred. The ruff of black feathers on 
the side of his neck gives it the name of the ruffled 
grouse. The front of his neck is light yellow. In 
Minnesota the birds are mostly of a brown hue. In 
Wisconsin many birds incline to the light or bright 
yellow on their wings and tail. In many remote 
places among the Green Mountains the light yellow 
prevailed. Where hunting was more common the 
darker hues appeared as they always did in New 
York State. The few birds killed in Illinois have 
run dark brown. The light yellow we think indi- 
cates increased age. Like all game birds the part- 








.-l£-'-'i~ •<£- ■-*£- -f-'-.^;._ _«.:.- - 3 



4- Mute^ 



Different Tracks Made by Game and Song Birds. 



268 PARTRIDGE. 

ridge walks with great precision, planting his feet 
squarely in a straight line. The impress of »his feet 
in the snow is very marked and beautiful and is 
easily distinguished from the prairie chicken or 
quail. The sparrow, the robin, the lark make short 
jumps as they go. The songsters of the woods 
double round in every conceiveable attitude, but the 
partridge like all game birds walks with the pride of 
a veteran and is the representative of high art. His 
motions have that promptness and steadiness which 
give you respect, as becomes a regal lord among tlie 
denizens of the field and forest. In my early days 
many hours were spent in the woods where the part- 
ridges dwelt. Trapping was common and most of 
the birds that were not shot were taken with stone 
traps set up with a figure four. In heavy snow 
storms the birds would often disappear under the 
snow and remain there concealed for many hours 
together, only the entrance being visible and at such 
times the farmer boys would come, hunt up the 
holes and falling suddenly on the unsuspecting birds 
would make them their prey. Sometimes the whole 
flock would be taken, but more often many escaped. 
This kind of commerce represented quite a trade 
before cap lock guns appeared, and the market men 
coming' along once or twice a week carried the 
produce to market of butter, eggs and game. Once 
I was told a great thaw came on and a number of 
birds began to soften and be in danger of spoiling. 
On the road to> Peekskill, the market on the Hudson, 
the driver was passing a small pond which had been 
frozen and now thawed. Thinking the birds too 
far gone to sell, he took the string and threw it into 
the water and passed on. A week later the weather 
had become much colder. The pond was freezing 
up when he repeated his trip and seeing the birds 



PARTRIDGE. 269 

there still undisturbed, he cut them out, cleaned up 
the feathers and sent them on their way again to 
New York, for which he received a good sum. I 
set many traps myself for these birds. One day I 
placed a line of traps along a path in the woods a 
few steps apart on a hill side which was a thicket, 
where partridges frequented and when I came out 
the next day to look after the traps, I had a whole 
armful of birds underneath them. When the birds 
ceased coming I set more traps outside of the 
wings of the others and much snow began to fall. 
I neglected them for a few days, but going later 
found one bird frozen fast under the trap, much 
eaten with mice, but I tore it out, sent it to market 
and it sold readily for a decreased price. I dis- 
tinctly remember the first partridge I ever shot at 
the top of the rocks encircled with evergreens as I 
have related. I took it home and as we had a vis- 
itor that day, old Dr. Johnson, as he was called, 
we cooked it as a special honor to him. 

Partridges are adepts at concealment. Their dark 
feathers in a large way insure their safety. Some- 
times they will rise afar off when you are not in 
pursuit of them. Again they will sit still and let 
you pass within a dozen feet. If they have perched 
upon a limb of a tree where the woods are heavy 
and open, you can scarcely scare them away. One 
day I fired a small rifle in hunting squirrels and I 
discovered a partridge sitting on a limb only a few 
feet away. I was nervous and could not hold cor- 
rect aim. I fired at least five or six times at him 
until he got ashamed of me and moved off. I have 
shot them on apple trees, where they had alighted 
to bud right over my head. When they fly to a 
grape vine, if the lower bird is first killed, and that 
manner followed the last one will remain to the end 



270 PARTRIDGE. 

until all are killed. Many years before I came to 
Illinois I was told of one that appeared in the 
bushes close by the house one clay, and allowed the 
little girl of the house to pick it up and bring it in 
as a pet or plaything and it showed no signs to fly 
away. I was passing a piece of woods in New York 
State, where I had sometimes seen a partridge rise 
from a little ridge, and looking down thoughtlessly 
as I came that way one day, I discovered him 
squatted close on the ground and I was not then 
over a dozen feet from him, and he remained with- 
out making an effort to rise till I killed him. 

This bird is not small. If you should meet him 
in the woods, coming suddenly upon him in some 
retired place, bursting out from some cover he 
would startle you. You would affirm that he weighed 
at least five pounds. On the contrary he will scarcely 
weigh a pound and a half; he is about two-thirds 
the size of a prairie chicken. His flesh is the menu 
of a king, the color of it being pure white recom- 
mends it to the housewife. In times of open mar- 
kets it commands more price than the prairie chick- 
en, often bringing seventy-five cents to a dollar a 
piece or more. At present the stringent laws make 
it less valuable. As the birds can be had in the 
Eastern States while the prairie chicken cannot, 
the large size of the latter is an additional induce- 
ment to purchase it. They appear in all parts of 
the United States except on the prairies, the plains 
and wet lands, where there is no timber, and some- 
times will take to the prairies also. We found them 
plentiful thirty years ago in Iowa, when we hunted 
prairie chickens. They were found many miles 
away from any woods. The dogs followed them 
through the coarse grass with great eagerness and 
they gave you a good shot which you would seldom 



PARTRIDGE. 2?1 

miss. There are now very few such birds in Illi- 
nois, and the promising flocks of a dozen or twenty 
years ago seem to have been destroyed. In Minne- 
sota and Montana they are most numerous, but we 
have never succeeded in killing more than twenty 
birds in one day. but believe many more have been 
taken in the states just mentioned, where so many 
thousand birds were exported until within the last 
few years. In the Eastern States partridges are 
very scattering, hardly half a dozen birds can be 
taken by one man in a day. They nest along the 
skirts of timber land, seldom going back far from 
the edge where they can retreat into heavy woods 
if necessary, and if a water course is obtainable they 
prefer that neighborhood. They lay a dozen eggs 
or more at a sitting and if not disturbed their flocks 
are uniformly large. 

If you have ever heard a partridge drum you will 
not forget that pleasing peculiarity of his social 
life. By it he keeps in touch with his fellows or 
his mate. He selects some fallen log in the woods, 
which he can reach with ease from a thicket or 
brush pile, and from whence when the mood takes 
him he can send his dispatches to all the members 
of his family. The boom of the partridge resem- 
bles the "boo" of the prairie chicken, but is not pro- 
duced by the throat, but by the beatings of the 
wings. The bird rises upon a log. For a moment 
he looks around to see no one approaches, and 
gives a rap on each side of the log with his wings. 
The motion resembles that of the baton when struck 
by the leader of an orchestra. The vibrations begin, 
they leap to the hills, they spread to the valleys. 
A momentary pause follows. One, two, three, the 
beats come forth in rapid succession. The bird 
rises upon his feet, he trembles with emotion, he 



272 PARTRIDGE DRUM. 

floats in the air on his wings and toes. With one 
prolonged effort he beats such a tattoo all the woods 
are vocal. They dominate all sound, they rise into 
echoes, like the murmurs of the woods or an incom- 
ing train. Then the wings are folded the sounds 
die away like the pulses of the ocean. 

With more or less pause he will continue this 
tumult for hours. It is not confined to any one 
hour, or month, or place. All the long summer and 
into the fall he continues this exercise at intervals. 
It is not easy to see him, for he is on guard against 
approach. At a slight sound he will stop his beat- 
ing before you get near him, unless it is by strategy. 
He is an efficient dissembler. If she has a brood the 
female will use all the arts at her service to draw 
you away from the loved ones. Once in a field 
outside the woods I was surpised by a partridge 
running before me and flapping her wings as if in 
trouble or her wings were broken. I pursued, 
thinking to catch her, but I reckoned too quickly. 
When she reached a fence she raised over it so 
easily I was fain to leave her and lost my interest 
in her. On returning to the place from which she 
started I found one young bird not yet flown, some- 
what larger than a quail, and I secured it. I car- 
ried it home, put it in a cage, but it beat its head 
against the bars and wires and died. However, it 
lost some of its wildness and fed out of my hand 
without fear or desire to fly away for many days. 

In many ways Nature plans a recompense. When 
the soil is barren the sun is lavish. Among wild 
birds where great waste is liable to occur she pro- 
vides extreme expedients of cunning by which the 
mother bird saves her brood. They are the pawns 
which Nature gives for the perpetuity of bird life. 
They are the physical and social equivalents by 



QUAIL. 273 

which she prevents or offsets impaired numbers. 
If wild birds had no more safeguards than domestic 
they would soon perish. 

The quail is one of our most esteemed game birds. 
Not only is his flesh tender and delicate, but it 
rivals the partridge in excellence of flavor and juici- 
ness. By most people it is more highly esteemed 
than snipe, woodcock or prairie chicken. In its 
native state it is half domestic, and instances are on 
record where it has sought the seclusion and pro- 
tection of the farm yard and mixed in with the 
fowls. It frequently lays in the same nest with the 
fowls and brings forth its brood in the same way. 
It is often kept in confinement till its wild nature 
is eliminated and its desire to run away abated. 
With the farmer he is proverbially called "Bob 
White" from the similarity # of its whistle to that 
sound, which commences in early summer when 
the bird begins to nest and is heard at frequent 
intervals morning and evening till the fall, when 
the brood is raised. In early summer the male is 
perched upon a fence post, or he walks with his 
lady love along the highways where feed is abun- 
dant and within easy reach. He is the pet of the 
farmers, who not only delight to see him with his 
covey of ten or fifteen birds, but generously credit 
him with devouring the bugs which are the ruin 
of their harvest. He is prized the more because 
when he has found a suitable home he seldom cares 
to go away. He requires food and shelter like the 
old-time harper. He will endure all the inclemen- 
cies of weather, will wander out before the storm 
begins and fill his crop and will sit by in cover till 
the storm ends. Only the snows fret and chasten 
his weary soul. Then he forms a trust and with 
the members of his flock builds a Chinese Wall 



274 



QUAIL. 



which shuts the Tartar drifts from his roost, and, 
sitting together with their heads pointing outward, 
they wait for the sun to melt and soften the snow. 
If the snow is heavy and sleet falls and freezes a 
crust they are entrapped. Many days come and go ; 
their food is spent, their plump bodies waste away 
in the stress of weather, and, cold setting in, whole 
broods freeze and perish. Such occurrences are 
rare biU they occur at times in the whole of the 
Northern states and the remnants in the Spring 




Quail. 



are years in recovery. We do not remember of 
over three or four such catastrophes in forty years 
in Illinois and that in the Northern part. The 
Southern part with local broods escaping went to 
fill up the gap in the years following. The quail 
seldom weighs half a pound from the best sections 
in the North, and Southern birds, including Ten- 
nessee and Texas, often weigh much less. A bar- 
rel of forty dozen will seldom exceed two hundred 
pounds. The best birds come from Nebraska, 



QUAIL. 275 

while those from Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Illi- 
nois are little inferior. The character of the food 
supply has more to do with their size than any 
other factor. Where they are best fed there is 
no complaint of light weight or shrunken bodies. 
The quail is conspicuous by the white stripe of 
feathers under his neck, which is confined to the 
male, and then it appears only after the second 
year. In one instance at least the white has been 
superseded by bright black, which specimen we 
now have, originally received from Indian terri- 
tory. The color of the bird is mostly dark brown 
over the head and neck and getting lighter as it pro- 
ceeds downward, with the ends of the shafts of 
the feathers a lighter hue and the extremity of the 
tail feathers a light blue. The breast feathers are 
flecked with bright oval spots. He has the ap- 
pearance of being rather timid and of a playful 
nature, but his character highly disproves that 
idea. He is a good fighter and comes into battle 
with the vigorous manner of partridges or grouse, 
by jumping furiously at his mate and pecking away 
until he has lost or won. He is a polygamist and 
autocrat and disputes the authority and presence 
of other males that spring up and attract attention 
in his covey. Ordinarily he is gregarious. All 
through the fall after the brood is grown and able 
to fly, through the winter and until late in the 
spring, he refuses to be separated from his mates. 
You may hunt him all day and he will not aban- 
don his natural dwelling place so far but that his 
shrill call will unite the covey again. If not fol- 
lowed up, after he has taken flight, in the course 
of an hour or two he will begin to> travel back to- 
wards the point from which he came, and with 
an occasional whistle the flock will unite before 



276 QUAIL. 

night fall. Bob White will not be out late at 
nights. The partridge will go off by himself any- 
where and at any time out, of the brooding season. 
He will sit all night in an evergreen tree alone, 
or he will take his bed in the snows or on the 
ground in hearing distance of others, and no two 
of them sitting together. The quail will not roost 
in the trees. He will take to them frequently when 
he can find no other cover, sometimes after a heavy 
fall of snow or when a crust is formed and he 
becomes too conspicuous, but at night fall he re- 
cants his heresy and demands a compact union. 
His nest is a very simple affair of a few joints or 
tufts of grass woven together and lined with the 
soft feathers which he can find to spare. The 
nest contains fourteen or fifteen eggs of a buff 
and white color with small patches of brown. 
It is generally placed in an open field where the 
growth of grass protects it from intruders, 
whether human or vermin. When the brood is 
brought out it is the weakest of all birds. The little 
ones very much resemble bumble bees and they 
scatter out and disappear in the most absurd holes 
and corners, throwing themselves at times on their 
backs and covering themselves with a leaf like an 
umbrella and giving no clew to their whereabouts 
until you are gone, and the female calls them to 
herself again. When they get large enough to fly 
they are called "wooly heads," which all hunters 
disdain to take or pursue. A few birds become 
large enough to fly in September and more in Oc- 
tober, when they are suitable to kill, but until snow 
flies and December has come you will not be sure 
but that you will find many immature birds that 
you will have to pass. The first light snows that 
come will bring your best sport. At that time the 



QUAIL. 277 

covies are full grown and birds of full size. Now 
they make a quick, sharp rise when flushed but will 
not fly far. You will not expect a bird that is only 
seven inches in length, of heavy build and short 
wings, to fly any long distance without rest. His 
feet carry him much further than his wings and 
he much prefers to use them, and he will only fly 
when it is unavoidable. There are times when he 
takes up a line of travel from one state to another, 
and rivers as large as the Mississippi will not stop 
him. Sometimes for days he will remain on one 
bank before he will venture to cross, and many are 
lost where the banks are very far apart. In 1866 
and 1867 vast numbers of them left their native 
home in Wisconsin and crossed into Iowa and Il- 
linois. In such cases it is not uncommon for a 
number of broods to associate together and in some 
instances over fifty birds have been found in one 
covy, and as these journeys occur only in the fall 
on the approach of cold weather, and largely from 
a colder to a warmer clime, it is believed to be an 
instinct of self-preservation comparable to the mi- 
grations of water fowls. Immediately after a very 
cold winter they will spread out over extensive 
tracts, mostly in pairs, where the covies have been 
desolated by frost, and cold, and many miles of 
country become joyful with them in the Spring 
where they have not been known in the winter. 
It is a well-known fact that in the old world quails 
pass from the Northern countries on the approach 
of winter, from France and Germany and even 
Britain into Spain and Egypt and Italy, and in 
such large numbers as to supply the markets of 
Europe. The increase of the bird is so rapid and 
his disposition to nest in any vacant place where 
the generosity of man will allow him to bring up 



278 QUAIL. 

his family in the manner he requires, it may be 
generations before he will disappear from the West- 
ern States. He has been hunted almost to death for 
fifty years, in Connecticut, New York and New 
Jersey, and still he remains, often in numbers not 
few. Where the partridge can live there is no 
doubt of the survival of the quail. He will venture 
into the farm yard in stress of the coldest weather 
and in the woods and swamps he will live on the 
balls of skunk cabbage, or in the neighborhood of 
a cider mill he will do well on the seeds thrown 
out with the pumice. He will often get poor in 
heavy snowstorms but return to normal condition 
when fine weather opens again. In fine, he is at 
home in more climates, he will stand more neglect, 
lie will give more hostages to fortune, and remain 
intact and unsuppressed, than any bird we have in 
this country. He is cosmopolitan, his home is from 
Connecticut to the Gulf and from the Atlantic to 
the Plains. He will endure and perish and will 
endure again in the cold, constricted region of Min- 
nesota or Wisconsin, never heeding or seeking his 
genial brethren of the South, who are accustomed 
to kindlier quarter and fare. Quail hunting has 
largely lost its prestige in Illinois ; it can never be 
of any great interest to> the sportsman where the 
state is made over mainly to cornfields and meadow 
land. Outside of the neighborhood of great cities 
there are few cornfields of any size which do not 
shelter one or more flocks of quail during the win- 
ter, but to step into a forty-acre cornfield and hunt 
it over for the purpose of getting a chance shot is 
the height of folly, which only a novice will un- 
dertake. After the first rise the birds become scat- 
tered and with a good tracking snow the crossing 
and recrossing of isolated birds soon destroys all 



QUAIL. 279 

chance of tracking them out. They will not lie 
still and the benefit of a good dog is not manifest 
where the pursuit is along open rows of corn stalks 
and the bird can track faster than you can follow 
him. When snow comes we would not use a dog 
at all. In the fall he is a necessity and if there 
is some open ground covered with tall grass and 
scattering thickets to which the bird can fly for 
shelter, you are tolerably sure of good sport. There 
is much of this kind of ground along the Rivers at 
the present day, along the sand dunes and patches 
of uncultivated grass. In country of this kind 
around New Boston, up and down the River where 
the fields are of reduced size, the birds are eas- 
ily reached. There are many points along the Rock 
River where good bags can yet be made and where 
the birds seem to wander, during periods of cold 
weather. I have never seen, however, any country 
where the shooting was better than among the 
Swede settlements in Knox county. The timber 
belt is there well broken up into small holdings, 
the land is rough and broken and coal pits are fre- 
quent, and after the corn is picked there is hardly 
a track made in the fields until spring work again 
begins. Most of the cornfields will not exceed 
five acres each, and as soon as you raise a flock 
of quails they take to the thickets along the hill- 
sides and dive down among the narrow canyons, 
where they lie close until you hunt them out. They 
rise one by one and the sport is fine. Two things 
they require ; when they find food and shelter they 
will not move away. They seem to suffer noth- 
ing from the loss of part of their flock. They 
whistle for scattered or lost members but once, or 
till darkness sets in. If they do not return their 
call ceases. They have no remembrance of lost 



280 QUAIL. 

companions ; they pursue their daily round for food 
and shelter as though they never existed. Often 
have I seen a quick winged hawk come suddenly 
upon them when the covey was flushed, and before 
it had rested in a fair and open field, take one or 
another in his claws and carry them off a few rods 
to an old tree top, without putting himself to any 
effort to overtake them. This has always hap- 
pened in a timber country. I never saw a quail 
caught by a hawk on a prairie. To those who 
hunt for profit, above all things, hunt by yourself 
alone. To say nothing of the risk of injury by the 
careless handling of the gun of your companion, 
one gun will destroy nearly as many birds as two 
guns or more in the hands of companions. One 
gun is ample for the destruction of a flock, if you 
desire it. This applies as well when shooting over 
'6 dog as without one. When you have found a 
flock and raise it, it is altogether likely that when 
you shoot you will both aim at the same bird, at 
least with one barrel, with the result that it is gen- 
erally torn to pieces. Waiting for your companion 
to fire often means you will not fire at all. Of the 
vast number of quail that have been killed there 
seems to be no means of getting any record, and 
the fact that the necessary supply for all the mar- 
kets of the country have been received from less 
than one-third of the area of the tillable lands of 
the country, and that they have survived for a pe- 
riod of at least fifty years, makes it certain that their 
final extinction will be longer delayed than that 
of any other bird. The improved quality of re- 
peating firearms will be its greatest enemy. 

The Golden Plover is a bird of passage in Illi- 
nois. It comes from the South in the spring and 
from the North in the Fall. Its habits have 



GOLDEN PLOVER. 



281 



changed somewhat from what we first knew him, 
in that now more often he has only one period of 
arrival in the Spring, about May ist, whereas he 
used to come in small detached bands about April 
15th and sometimes a month earlier, on the break- 
ing up of the frost by a sudden warm spell. At 
such times his flesh was in very poor order, never- 
theless quite salable from its scarcity at that time 
of the year. After a week's rest in April he moved 
on to some other country and when he appeared 




Golden Plover. 



again in May he had put on a new and flashy coat. 
Streaks of black feathers had formed along the 
sides of his head and neck, and bright spots of 
black had replaced the dirty brown of his breast, 
which he wore when he went away. The longer 
he tarried in May the slicker and shinier his coat 
became, so that when he left for his summer jour- 
ney, about May 15, his outward appearance pre- 
sented a guarantee of the fat and juicy relish which 
his body gave. To our mind, in this condition he 
is the peer of any bird we have in the West, and 
has come to be as highly prized by market men as 



282 GOLDEN PLOVER. 

any other. In these late years as the flocks became 
smaller they became also wilder, and instead of 
staying in flocks when they alighted they spread 
out over the ground, every bird by himself, so that 
it has been impossible to shoot large numbers with 
a single shot. It also happened from the scarcity 
of flocks that a hunter could not station himself in 
any one place and be sure of killing very many at 
once. 

In the 6o's the case was altogether different. In 
the country North and East of Atkinson and around 
Hundred Acre Grove, and in the marshes nearest 
thereto, the birds came in large flocks, great num- 
bers of them, and remained through the season 
till the time of their disappearance Northward. 
Within two miles of Atkinson we have seen as 
large numbers as in any part of Illinois. There 
was a brisk chance for the exercise of all the skill 
you possessed in taking them. Over high knobs 
the flocks would pass continuously for days in a 
northeast direction, and, sitting in your buggy with 
a gentle horse the numbers you could shoot were 
almost unlimited. In the morning the birds were 
wilder and more inclined to separate. As the heat 
came on they became less restless, their suspi- 
cions died away and by ten or eleven o'clock you 
could drive up within three or four rods of them, 
and by not driving directly towards them, but tak- 
ing a quarterly direction, they would drop down 
on a hillside, close to the ground, and lie there till 
you had stopped and fired. If they showed a dis- 
position of unusual wariness and we could not get 
more than one or two birds at a shot, we would 
not shoot but gradually round them up towards 
the pond or the edge of a marsh, and rather than 
be driven over that to less rich feeding grounds 



GOLDEN PLOVER. 283 

and take the labor of a flight, they would allow you 
to approach very close, sometimes would gather 
up into an immense flock, when you would get in 
your destructive work. For hours we have fol- 
lowed that plan in a single locality, where on the 
open prairie they would constantly rise and pass on 
before you out of reach. Sometimes they would 
light by a narrow pond of their own accord, large 
numbers of them, till the ground was perfectly 
black, when we would kill from twenty to forty 
birds at one discharge, but the success was most 
marked when they sought the shallow water an 
inch or two deep, spots of which were conspicuous 
all over the prairie. There the birds went for a 
bath. Then they became the victims of the crip- 
pled ones who at the first shot were not killed but 
unable to rise and used their vocal powers with 
effect to call back the flock which had started to 
move away, lifting their wings in the air and mak- 
ing their inimitable cry. The flock would return 
and settle down among them and the slaughter be 
repeated. As the heat increases and the low pools 
shorten up and the ground that once was damp and 
soft, so that the worms could easily be reached, 
has now become hard and sodden, the plovers show 
more decided symptoms to move away. They con- 
gregate in larger flocks. They sail round in the air 
and examine the most favorable places to alight. 
Small places where the grass has a firm growth they 
desert, the better places hold them a little while 
longer. They are plenty today. In the morning 
following there is a scarcity apparent and by mid- 
day whole detachments begin to gather in the air 
and sail about. At the sound of a gun they rise 
high in the air, and after making a few circles, 
sometimes for miles in diameter, whistling con- 



284 GOLDEN PLOVER. 

stantly, they whirl off into another state on their 
way to the North. From Illinois they pass into 
Iowa and Minnesota, only remaining a few days, 
then northeasterly again. They are not heard from 
unless they land as of yore in the vicinity of Cape 
Breton and New Foundland. As they are always 
wanted badly for market purposes and could easily 
be had in Boston or New York if they were to be 
reached at such a short distance, we hardly think 
that very many of them remain there at this day. 
One thing is noticeable, the bird before he leaves 
this State has only very small eggs when it is killed, 
so that we have reason to believe they have a month 
or more in time to reach the country where they 
propose to nest. There are such vast and unex- 
plored wilds in British America and around Hudson 
Bay, even up to the Arctic Ocean, where ducks and 
geese and cranes abound and nest every year, we 
believe their present breeding place is in that coun- 
try many hundred miles beyond Illinois, but their 
flight is so rapid and their incubation so short that 
some stray specimens reach us on their return Sep- 
tember 1st, before they have wholly regained their 
winter plumage. What few remain here get very 
fat before they move away and in that time their 
plumage changes. 

There are few golden plover west of the Mis- 
souri and we are inclined to think that during their 
times of passage they follow up and down mostly 
through the gateway of the Mississippi. 

We have said the grass plover is an inhabitant 
of this state, and it remains with us all summer. 
Here he raises his brood and leaves early for the 
South during the month of August. Some strag- 
glers appear in October. He is also extremely 
plenty in Kansas, Nebraska and Minnesota, and 



GRASS PLOVER. 



285 



considering how much he has suffered at the hands 
of many hunters, the wonder is that he has sur- 
vived at all. Unless it is the quail no game bird 
has figured up the losses to as high a total as has 
the grass plover in Nebraska and Kansas. In those 
states it seemed to be the ambition of an inconsid- 
erate dealer to see how many birds he could destroy 
and sell at a minimum figure, so small, indeed, that 




Grass Plover. 



the price but slightly paid more than the cost to 
kill. In some future period some seeker after sta- 
tistics will be surprised to learn that not less than 
fifty or sixty thousand birds went annually out of 
Nebraska in April to Kansas City, and afterwards 
were sold broadcast all over the Union wherever a 
buyer could be found for a munificent sum not to 
exceed fifty cents per dozen and sixty to seventy- 
five cents in New York, and this same drain was 
continued for many years until after 1890. This 



286 GRASS PLOVER. 

had a bad effect in an indirect way. Ordinarily 
grass plover get their young raised in June and 
July, and the prairies of Nebraska and Kansas 
are teeming with them in August. When we first 
went there in 1880, in August, a good shot could 
kill a hundred birds a day in the cornfields, (most 
of them magnificent birds and extremely fat), and 
continue so doing till near the first of September, 
when they moved on to the south. We never could 
find them very plenty in August but one year. As 
soon as we began to hunt Dow birds in the Spring 
in times of scarcity, the hunters spent much of their 
time in killing grass plover and then the young 
birds began to disappear from the prairies. In- 
stead of getting a great many handsome birds in 
late summer that would weigh four or five pounds 
to* a dozen, we were compelled to be content to 
gather in only a few barrels in a whole month, and 
many of them too light to be wanted. If some re- 
straint could have been put upon this slaughter in 
the Spring enough birds could have been saved to 
supply all the markets the year round with fine, 
fat birds. Even the poor spring birds would have 
brought a moderate price if they had been scarce. 
The year before 1880 we sold them as high as $4 
a dozen, which was a good price for a bird which 
had little to recommend it but its scarcity. We paid 
that year the same price for Dow birds and grass 
plover. The next year we paid $1.25 to $1.50 for 
grass plover and $2.00 to $2.50 for Dow birds. 
As the years followed one another the price con- 
stantly was raised on Dow birds and lowered on 
plover until at last Dow birds were worth $4 a 
dozen and grass plover worth 60 cents. One year 
during a scarcity of snipe we sold our entire stock 
of grass plover, spring birds, at an average of about 



Grass plover. 287 

$2.00 a dozen. This slaughter that was going on 
in Nebraska and Kansas was followed up largely 
in Northern Iowa and Minnesota. In these places 
new freezers were being put up in many places. 
All that seemed necessary to the buyer to make 
fortunes was to freeze up the birds and wait quietly 
for the profit. Thousands and thousands of dozens 
were absolutely thrown away. We know of one 
man in Kansas, not a dealer, who after shipping 
east four or five thousand dozen, offered to sell us 
as many thousand dozen as we wanted for fifty 
cents per dozen on track. It took ten years to 
decimate the grass plover in the Western States. 
To us it passed all understanding that a bird that 
usually raised only three or four young in a sea- 
son and was seen only in scattering pairs, not very 
many appearing at any one time, could escape ex- 
termination so long. No doubt many sections of 
country were not molested, and the drafts that 
were made upon the birds reached wide areas, and 
those who had entertained bright hopes of great 
margins began to waver when unprofitable returns 
began to come in. 

The spring bird is a light affair. He comes to 
his summer home without fear, and while the female 
is busy with her nest the male comes sailing along 
in his triumphant way, throws up his wings and 
settles down on a post where you are sure to see 
him, often by the roadside, where he can regale 
you with his song and invite you to disturb him if 
you dare. If you are riding across the prairie and 
he sees you he will follow you many times for 
miles, singing his friendly song far above your head 
till you are far away, then he returns to the neigh- 
borhood of his nest. In driving along you may, 
if you choose, snap off his neck with your whip 



288 GRASS PLOVER. 

when once he has alighted. This state of endear- 
ment does not last very long. As a rule, you may 
say, as he begins to grow fat he begins to grow 
wary. When the young leave their nest the grass- 
hoppers are in season. He leads his little flock of 
young birds to some old grass pasture which is a 
partial cover and alive with his kind of feed, where 
they all begin to feast and fatten. He takes on a 
bright inquiring look, and if the cover of old grass 
is not sufficient he is careful to fly to thicker cover, 
or even to run there before he will give you a good 
shot. If he thinks he is hidden so you do not ob- 
serve him, he may sit quietly, but all the probabili- 
ties are he has sized you up with a good deal of 
judgment. As his fatness increases the feathers 
on his breast are changed from a light to a bright 
yellow, and you can tell his condition by the strength 
and brightness of his color. When he first came he 
did not display that rich hazel which is a marked 
feature of his autumn days, and he seemed more 
inclined to run than to fly. Then he was much of 
a coquette, alighting wherever he thought you 
would notice him, now flying delightfully near you, 
he would warble his address. "Don't you know 
me? I was with you last year. Glad to see you 
every day." And every day he will come and re- 
peat the same message till midsummer. Slowly his 
fashion changes as Autumn comes on and his brood 
is saved. He leaves the mowed field and the mow- 
er. As a rule the thinner the bird the lesik he is 
troubled with your presence. As he gets in better 
flesh his timidity and suspicion rapidly increase. 
He has a way now of throwing up his wings, but 
it is to fly. When he mounts it is high up in the 
air and his notes at parting are monosyllables, 
which seem to glide like jets of oil from his fat 



MALLARD DUCK. 



289 



and unctuous throat. He is individual now, not so- 
cial. He is partial awhile of the dignity and delight 
of a few friends, but they are soon forgotten, and he 
will pass out one by one into the gloom and dark- 
ness which intervenes between his home and the 
land which he now covets. The coming rain storm 
will end his summer life. His secret is with the 
stars until he is a hundred miles away. 




When we come from land birds to water birds 
among game, as are the various species of ducks, 
we would naturally expect their numbers would be 
very much increased. Water covers a large part 
of the globe, but most of it is unfit for the home or 
the haunts of wild fowl. The ice pack that cov- 
ers the north part of the Continent for eight months 
of the year drives them to warmer climes when 
winter is on. The great oceans produce no bush, 



290 MALLARD DUCK:. 

no vegetation, no plot of land upon which the weary 
traveler from Arctic Seas can rest. From year to 
year the waves swallow up all that the Sea produces. 
Only the floating ships that pass on into the night 
and leave no trace behind them escape. The shores 
of the Ocean are silent. Only here and there a 
little belt of water surrounded by rising peaks of 
land that cover in an estuary or bay and draining 
oft into shallow basins where bottom is easily 
reached for food, have the ducks any sanctuary 
whatever. As the cities enlarge and spread and 
white sails dot these suburban resorts, the ducks 
must go to sea or fall back into the rivers and 
lakes of fresh water. There their prospects are 
not much better. American genius and enterprise 
are scouring the back bays for new railroads and 
new lines of travel. Cities are planned, new ships 
come to port, and the rivers are unlocked and their 
treasures transported away. Many years ago the 
ducks nested in large numbers in every marsh where 
wild flags, or water and coarse grass appeared. The 
Annawan swamps, in common with many others in 
the country, raised mallards and teal in profusion. 
Then came a dry spell of several years' duration. 
The importunities of farmers, who saw a chance of 
enlarging their realties, drove an effective bargain 
with holders of these waste and flooded lands, and 
with a system of ditches, reclaimed so much of it 
that the ducks eventually avoided it, and their as- 
sociations were so thoroughly dissipated they never 
cared to come back. For a while they bred and 
thrived in the waters of Wisconsin and Minnesota. 
Inside of the timber belt of Northern Minnesota lies 
an immense prairie country, full of all the rice 
ponds and laughing lakes which encourage the ducks 
to tarry. There they first appear in the Fall within 



MALLARD DUCK. 29i 

reach of the hunters as the weather turns cold. 
Here the ducks filled in as they left Illinois in the 
Spring. The waters were troubled. The Indian 
dwelt^along the shores; his trusty canoe was al- 
ways at hand ; the markets were open for ducks ; 
he wanted them, and when he commenced to hunt 
he hunted all Summer. The home markets fur- 
nished him advantages for sale. Across the open 
pools he pursued the birds with vigor. The ring 
of the carbine in those wilds was heretofore almost 
unknown. His bark cut the waves that were guilt- 
less of ripples save for the newcomers and his old- 
time fur bearers. The ducks could not rest, they 
moved again. This time they passed northward, 
so f?r the blast of the steam whistles could not 
reach them. Neither could the Indian move that 
far. He is a mover from time immemorial, but 
the' white man holds all the routes of travel and 
will continue to do so. The Indian must go back 
to the fur bearers that thread their way through all 
the fresh water lakes, or perish. The Indian will 
live and die on the outskirts of civilization and still 
be uncivilized. How far northward the ducks have 
emigrated is unknown, but it is believed many of 
them are very near or quite within the Arctic circle. 
Somewhere about 1885 we had our last flood of 
ducks. They were in surfeit, mostly mallards. The 
waters of the Mississippi were congested with them. 
The same occurred along the Chariton in Missouri, 
and doubtless many other points. The birds were 
not hard to reach. It was winter time and the 
slaughter kept up until it was nearly Spring. As 
one flock was destroyed new ones came in. Whole 
carloads were killed and sent to market and sold 
at ridiculously low prices. Where freezers were to 
be had hundreds of barrels were carried over into 



292 MALLARD DUCK. 

the next year. If you can believe that short time 
destroyed them altogether as it did the pigeons a 
little later, then you have no need of hunting or of 
laws. 

The mallard is a native of no state or territory 
exclusively. He is not unknown in the waters of 
Long Island Sound. We have shot him in the 
Croton River that supplies the aqueduct of New 
York. He is an inhabitant of the entire West and 
South, beside his active visits in the extreme North. 
His lines of travel in the Spring and Fall carry him 
along the important rivers. He turns off wherever 
he can see an open pond to feed and rest. He is 
always on the lookout. No other duck sends out 
so many scouts to spy out the land. The most re- 
mote lakes are not infrequently visited by him wher- 
ever they have been detected by the sharp glance of 
his eye. He knows every defense that hunters make 
to lure him within reach. He knows the safety of 
other ducks which he sees in the waters will grant 
him the like safety. Where redheads and canvas- 
backs alight he is all patience and fearless. He is 
more neglectful of the teal and small ducks which 
use shallow water and near cover, and he has been 
surprised so many times that at every motion he is 
fearful an undiscovered enemy will spring up. He 
is partial to the flags where they fringe deep water 
and he can sit about unnoticed. He is a bird of 
many associates and is not coy or critical about 
his companions. He will sport in the air with a 
flock of teal or even small ducks, and on the arrival 
of a new flock of any kind he is liable to light down 
among them. His appearance is like a flag set upon 
all waters. Like the crow while watching for him- 
self he watches for others. His size varies greatly 
and much with the season. In the Spring he arrives 



MALLARD DUCK. 293 

poor in flesh. When the cornfields are bare he 
soon makes up for all short weights. Forty years 
ago he used to be frequently found in the cornfields 
in March and even in February. Now he seldom ap- 
pears before April ist, only in very scattered flights. 
By the middle of April, when he is ready to nest or 
leave, he will weigh from three pounds upwards, 
earlier not to exceed two to two and a half pounds. 
In the fall he is not desirable until after October 
15th, when his winter coat is far enough advanced 
to give him the best sale. In general when his coat 
is fine his flesh is also. The female does not pre- 
sent the beautiful color of the male, neither is her 
weight so great. Sometimes they have been fed 
and netted in the Fall in large numbers, and in that 
case they would weigh four pounds each. Where 
hunting is good many persons seem to desire mal- 
lard shooting above all others. There are men who 
can lie down in the bottom of a skiff and dropping 
on their back when seeing a flock of mallards ap- 
proaching, can so place or displace themselves and 
without frightening the birds away secure a good 
shot with each barrel. We did not spend much of 
our time with them. What little we did was gen- 
erally unprofitable. Size considered, they are the 
cheapest ducks in the market. They are heavy to 
carry where you have not the convenience of a boat 
and the best shooting is often where a boat cannot 
travel. Besides mallards and teal, especially the 
greenwings, are most liable to spoil of all wild 
ducks in a sudden change of warm weather. To 
draw them reduces their best appearance and value. 
Ordinarily we could kill as many chickens in a day 
as mallards and many of the drawbacks we have 
noticed did not happen to them, and they would 
sell for double the price. I am not certain after 



294 MALLARD DUCK. 

handling many thousands of mallards I derived any 
profit from them. In instances they have sold re- 
markably well, perhaps for a first time and under 
new circumstances. I never sold any higher than 
$1.25 a pair, and then only in the winter season 
after the close of the war. A dollar per pair has 
been the objective point, and that has been very few 
times reached. 

There are wonderful stories afloat of immense 
numbers of mallards killed by some fortunate hunt- 
er, but I am not one so fortunate. I never killed 
but fifty birds in one day, and that only once in the 
course of three or four hours' shooting. This was 
in a cornfield adjoining Coal Creek a mile and a half 
north of Annawan, and the circumstances were all 
favorable. Large numbers of mallards sat in the 
Creek all day and late in the afternoon came out 
over the field, attracted by a thin strip of buckwheat 
which twisted around at varying angles and cut in 
twain twenty or thirty acres of corn. I had only to 
step inside the shadow of the corn and the work 
commenced. A new breech-loader had just come 
out and I had one of them. It was a pinfire and 
alreadv the defect of that kind of gun was appar- 
ent. The smoke constantly worked out around the 
pin. The strain of the gun by degrees parted per- 
ceptibly the close union of stock and barrel and it 
appeared no great prophecy of the future when the 
locking would give way. I threw down a handful 
of shells on a corn hill and began to blaze away. 
The shots seemed to have unusual effect, perhaps, 
the birds were closer than I imagined, but I seldom 
fired in vain. Small detachments of birds came up 
steadily from the Creek, and viewing the ground, 
prepared to light down. They returned with one 
Or two less each time. My dog sat by me and 



TEAL DUCK. 2»5 

picked up all the wounded birds. He knew when 
the shot was effective and if the bird fell twenty 
yards away or forty yards, he bounded away and 
brought it in, never missing- a bird. I never shot 
so fast before. The loads were strong and the 
gun was light. I constantly felt at every recoil that 
the fastening was gone or given way, and even 
doubted whether my head remained. I examined 
the smoked barrels, saw that they held nearly in 
place, and drove in two more cartridges. At last I 
broke a wing but slightly from the point. The 
bird settled over the top of a hill and the dog tar- 
ried too long. I ran after him. On the way I 
ran onto another hunter who was all anxiety to 
know how many men were shooting over there. I 
told him there was no one else but myself, and ex- 
plained to him the action of the breech-loader. He 
declared he thought all h — 1 was broken loose. In 
the course of a few hours I secured the number 
above stated and never lost one bird. 

Where the hunter has succeeded in finding an 
open hole in the ice in the marshes north of An- 
nawan, and the flags gave him cover to approach 
within shooting distance, fifty birds have been 
killed at one discharge, and probably a few more. 
When the ice is forming and birds come in thick 
around a pond hole it keeps it from freezing and 
then the death record may be very great and the 
birds are the best of the season. 

There are few people who have taken an interest 
in game birds but have a distinct idea of the nature 
and appearance of teal duck, both green and blue 
wing. In the early history of the game business in 
Illinois both kinds were quite plenty. Wherever 
shallow water prevailed and the season of the year 
was opportune, in the swamp country north of An- 



296 



TEAL DUCK. 



nawan and Mineral, and in and adjacent to St. 
Peters, flocks of a thousand or more were of no 
unusual occurrence in September and early October. 
The best hunters killed as high as ioo birds each 
in one day and in one season when a swivel gun 
was brought into use it was reported that fifty 
or more blue wings were often killed at one shot. 
Good teal shooting was then the rule in October 
until away along in the '8o's. The difference' be- 
tween the two kind of teal was very early apparent. 
The blue wings were always in superior condition 




Teal Duck. 



throughout the fall. The green wings were of a 
soft and spongy nature. They rarely remained en- 
tirely sound when held a few days for shipment. 
The only time they were really prime was at the 
close of the season, either Spring or Fall. Their 
plumage then was of the best. They associated in 
small bands which followed up the little outlying 
streams that go to make up the more important 
rivers. Here they remained till the heat of sum- 



GREEN WINGS AND BLUE WINGS. 297 

mer or the cold of winter drove them out. They 
remained long- after the blue wings were gone, 
which had become more sagacious and moved 
South. At this time the markings of his neck and 
his whole coat was noticeably beautiful. The stripes 
of tawny red had become brilliant and set off the 
plainer colors which covered his back. His wing 
and tail covers were marked with an excess of 
varying tints, all of which exhibited themselves 
when on the wing. Either kind was easily killed, 
as they lived and fed remote from deep waters. 
Generally the two- kinds fed separately, but the blue 
wings did not covet wooded countries while the 
green wing frequented both timber and prairie. 
The green wings weigh much less than a pound, 
the blue wings very often a pound or more. The 
blue wings arrived early in pairs in the Spring ; 
they went South in flocks. In the beginning of 
May and through the month of June in those days 
strips of old grass, adjacent to shallow ponds, oft- 
enest in the neighborhood of marshes, were coursed 
over by the female who repaired there to build her 
nest. In some little tussock, hid away from the 
view of passersby, she formed a bed of soft grass 
overlaid with feathers from her own body, wherein 
she laid twelve or fifteen eggs, which she watched 
with tenderest care till the brood appeared. In July 
and August she led them to adjacent waters long be- 
fore they could fly. Every brood formed a covey 
and of every covey she was the sole guardian. 
They fed along the shore and were ciuick and alert 
to hide away when anybody appeared. 

Whoever has seen these new-born flocks, skim- 
ming the waters of a pond without a ripple on the 
surface, or slipping slyly through flags and brakes 
and spear grass without a stem displaced or a panel 



298 GREEN WINGS AND BLUE WINGS. 

broken, must have felt the illusions of art slip away 
before the grander displays of nature. Summer 
renews the rich garb to the hills and fields which 
Winter winds have shaken. Over the barren earth 
falls rain and sunshine. A plant springs up here 
and there, a leaf or flower hides the uncanny mould, 
a tiny nest is formed and soon the waters are gay 
with microscopic fleets. From out the fetid waste 
towers and cathedrals and steeples of woven grass 
spring up and the corridors sparkle with insect life. 
In the twilight, in the black and dark night the wa- 
ter spider spins her Gobelins. Across turbid pools 
and angry chasms she throws bridges of gossamer 
and traverses them with electric speed to bind the 
moth and the fly in her chambers, and robed in a 
vest of gold and scarlet, she sits down a queen. 
From beneath the surface of the water spring up 
airy bubbles which bear golden crowns or flash in 
helmets of a mock army fading away in the all- 
absorbing waters. The rough world is symbolized 
in the glory of her children. 

We think the large flocks of ducks that in those 
early days appeared were made up mostly of home- 
grown birds. The Annawan country at that time 
seemed to be underlaid with the waters of an im- 
mense lake. Buckles of Geneseo used to say he 
could sink the town with an augur hole. It did not 
seem possible the land could ever be drained. Nev- 
ertheless the many dry seasons that have preceded 
the present one have wrought wonders and now 
water is none too plenty and ducks have ceased to 
nest there. We recall the distich of Sir Walter 
Scott : 

"To see the stately drake 

Lead forth his fleet upon the Lake." 
and wonder that he was a benedict and carried a 



TEAL DUCK. 299 

gun. "Anything alarming?" "Oh, no," but Lock- 
hart, his son-in-law, described the poet as possessed 
of very varied general information, the owner of a 
dog, and if of the hunting kind must have taken 
him to the Tweed many times and seen ducks in 
profusion where he might have brushed up his in- 
formation with the familiar adage, "All ducks are 
not drakes." Furthermore, between the two ditches 
of Abbottsford and Ballantine & Company, which 
were slowly draining him into bankruptcy, he might 
have overlooked obvious distinctions of habits male 
and female, and accorded the male duck the un- 
deserved honor of being the lord protector of the 
flock, when on the contrary all hunters know the 
female bears all the drudgery of protecting and. car- 
ing for their young, a conspicuous fact noticeable 
of all ducks. The drake is the most perfidious 
benedict. He lives in open disregard of the rights 
and privileges of his mate, making morganatic mar- 
riages in all kinds of times and places. He is es- 
pecially fond of displaying the superficial gaudiness 
of his coat to every female that passes and never 
wearies of their attention. Like many a lord he is 
not on hand when crises come. Often in some se- 
cluded pond he spends long seasons of rest in the 
company of strange wives while the heat and halo 
of summer lasts. He limits his matrimonial duties 
to himself, which are often elusive and performed 
only when it suits him. When the female in all this 
time has reared and cared for the brood the repent- 
ent lord comes back. He has now sobered down 
into quiet ways with the shedding of his summer 
coat. He is again gregarious and will not seclude 
himself any longer among strangers. He will keep 
in close distance with the members of his flock, but 
he will also join an emigrant flock as readily as 



300 TEAL DUCK. 

his own. He will bring roving flocks together, 
and the larger the aggregate the better does he 
seem pleased. He becomes more wary as the fall 
approaches and the flock increases. He will rise 
en masse with the least alarm and is subject to all 
the limitations which beset his bird life. He is fat- 
tening rapidly and by the middle of October pre- 
sents an interesting mark for the gunner. He falls 
with a splash and a thud, many times in numbers 
at one discharge. The few brig*ht days of early 
October seem to be well pleasing to him and he 
remains much in the same neighborhood if water is 
abundant and he is not too hotly pursued, but the 
time of his sojourn is short and in common with 
most birds he disappears in a night. He passes far 
to the South and in the Winter time he is as far 
down as the swampy country of Louisiana. 

The blue wing is a superb treat for the table and 
to our mind has never been sufficiently prized. His 
flesh is firm and will remain entirely sound when 
the green wing is rapidly becoming out of order. 
Like the canvas and redhead he is fat only in the 
fall and his entire change of color from Spring to 
Fall makes it impossible to substitute Spring for 
Fall birds. A few hundred teal have been gathered 
in the St. Peters marsh the past Fall, but a change 
backward to dry seasons again will be fatal to fur- 
ther sport among us. 

Canvasback and redhead have always occupied a 
very conspicuous place among marketmen wherever 
they were to be had and the laws permitted their 
sale. In 1885 and '86 they reached the highest fig- 
ures known, at least for canvasback, and five to> six 
dollars a pair was no unusual price for fat, heavy 
Fall birds in a wholesale way. Redheads at that 
time sold as high as three dollars per pair for spring 



CANVASBACK AND REDHEAD. 301 

birds, but two dollars was the more common price 
and in some seasons they declined to less than one 
dollar. Under the stimulus of the larger figures the 
country was scoured from Wisconsin to Texas and 
all along the Atlantic coast the birds were Roughly 
handled, and even' California was drawn on for 
Winter ducks, especially canvasback. In a year or 
two the pendulum swung backward. Fashion, 
which in a large measure sets the prices for all 
game birds, changed suddenly so that they were 




Canvas Back. 

not so frequently called for. Many of the birds 
were found to be of poor quality and lightweights 
were common among Spring ducks, which, com- 
ing out of the coolers hard frozen, they deceived 
the best buyers, until Spring birds were almost un- 
noticed and fell from to one-half to one-third of 
their former values. Then it followed that stan- 
dard weights of three pounds for canvasback and two 
pounds and a half for redheads for the Fall catch 
were insisted upon. If this recession in prices had 
not occurred when it did canvasback and redhead 



302 CANVASBACK AND REDHEAD. 

would soon have been a thing of the past. All 
kinds of ways for securing these birds were prac- 
ticed and allowed. Sink boats, sneak boats and 
swivel guns were brought into play and destroyed 
large numbers, whereas if they. had been protected 
and allowed only to be killed as now in the fringes 
of deep water where flags make a cover, they doubt- 
less might have remained fairly plenty for many 
years to come. 

Not very many are now killed in the spring time 




Red-Head. 

in Illinois. Those that are brought into the market 
come mostly in the fall from Wisconsin and Min- 
nesota, and the hunters there have been very reticent 
of disclosing their knowledge of the exact places 
where they were killed, but now that the laws have 
forbidden shipping out of the State the knowledge 
is not so important, and the man that goes for sport 
can certainly now secure them fairly easy and in 
reasonable numbers. Redhead seem to be plenty 
yet in some places, but not enough come in of stan- 
dard weights to materially influence the market. 
They hold their place well up to old figures and it 



CANVASBACK AND REDHEAD. 303 

is no secret that except where wild celery grows, 
which gives the canvas a very excellent flavor, the 
quality of fat redheads fully equals that of canvas- 
back, and except among the smaller sizes are worth 
equally as much. Doubtless the appearance of the 
canvasback has tended to give it a fanciful name. 
In this respect it is widely different from all oth- 
ers. Its neck and bill are very long, fitting it to 
feed in deep water, and while the bill of the red- 
head is rather broad and short, that of the canvas is 
thin and long. The male redhead and canvasback 
are very beautiful from their pronounced red color. 
In the Spring the breast of the canvasback is a clear 
white, so that the different markings make him an 
object distinguishable everywhere at long distances. 
In the fall he takes on a grayer color, the white dis- 
appears and the colors are not so bright. In 1884 
we had a large stock of redheads, which sold very 
slowly in the following Winter and Spring at about 
eighty cents per pair, which was in no way en- 
couraging, and contrary to the advice of the best 
dealers we put up a large quantity in the Spring 
following, which we bought at low prices. The re- 
sults were extremely flattering and they have been 
related in a previous chapter. Neither redheads nor 
canvasbacks are native of this State. Occasionally 
a redhead has nested in this country, but we have 
never known a canvasback to nest here. It is not 
known with any certainty just where they pass the 
Summer, but it is far to the Northwest, where they 
must nest, and they first appear in Wisconsin dur- 
ing the flights of other ducks from the North, 
where henceforth the onlv trade in them will be. 



304 GAME LAWS. 

The game laws are popularly supposed to be 
passed for the protection of game. When they ac- 
complish that purpose they are to be commended, 
but in most cases they lose that distinctive quality 
and are made for the protection of sportsmen. Such 
men are always opposed to pot hunters. Yet it is 
true that all sportsmen are pot hunters, either for 
themselves or somebody else, only the real pot hunt- 
ers work for their own profit, to get game, while 
the true sportsmen who are real shot slingers work 
for the prize of winning and the delight of sport. 
If the birds to be protected are so scarce that only 
a few can share the prize then the generosity of 
those who are able and willing to give the game 
away is invested with a new luster. Now is their 
day of grace. The noble sportsmen who fight shy 
of selling their goods are invited by the laws to step 
in and take the game while it is to be had. Profit 
taking in game in Illinois is a thing of the past. 
There are no levies of wild birds being made. There 
are no accumulations in cold storage, which dis- 
turbed the game fanciers so much a few years ago. 
The laws are made for your benefit. If you doubt 
this a study of their real character will disabuse 
you. You need not be told that to kill prairie 
chickens in September is not to protect them, when 
as a consequence every brood is cut to pieces in a 
few days after the commencement of the month. 
Jacksnipe are free to be killed all Winter when 
they are far of! in the Southern States trying to 
eke out a precarious existence until Spring. In 
April the same law holds good till fat and flesh is 
put on, then shooting ends. Not till the last week 
or ten days of April is the bird at its best flesh, and 
of what value is it to kill thin and sickly birds up 
to that time ? What do vou think of wookcock sold 



GAME LAWS. 305 

in the open markets under guarantee of law in De- 
cember and January? You may well wonder at 
the gullibility of law makers which allows sportsmen, 
noble though they be, to go South for Winter sport 
and kill the very birds that we shall need next Sum- 
mer to raise new broods. Not a woodcock breeds 
in Louisiana, Summer or Winter. Nevertheless you 
can go there and your table d'hote be supplied with 
them every day, and they can be distributed in 
Northern markets at present when they are few as 
in the past when they were plenty, till they are none 
left to distribute. The game laws of Illinois permit 
the bringing in of birds from other States from 
October till February following. The Southern 
States will make the same plea for winter shoot- 
ing that our hunters do for Spring shooting in Il- 
linois. Woodcock are to be had in the Southern 
States only in the Winter, and it is now only a 
question between sportsmen who shall get them, 
North or South, but in the end it will be as the 
frog said to those who were stoning him, "This may 
be sport to you but it is death to us." With our 
shooting of Spring ducks, if it is claimed this is 
the only chance for them to be killed, we would say 
why need they be killed at all. They are, in most 
cases, so poor in flesh their market value is very 
small. The woodcocks are put to the slaughter 
twice every year, from September to December in 
the North, then till February in the South. At the 
present time in December and January the hotels 
in the Gulf States are seeking to attract guests by 
the superior facilities of shooting woodcock, quail 
and snipe which they have there, and which in the 
case of woodcock and snipe are the remnants of 
broods which have been raised and protected in the 
North. It is not believed the Legislature had in 



306 GAME LAWS. 

mind birds of passage as these two kinds are, when 
it admitted their sale from other States, and they 
intended the laws should apply to prairie chickens 
and quails from beyond the Mississippi. As these 
States now forbid transportation out of their lim- 
its, it would be no hardship to repeal all the laws 
which make provision for interstate traffic. Wood- 
cock and snipe could then be used only for home 
market and further diminution of birds could be 
placed where the real fault belonged. 

There have been laws for game protection ever 
since the State was settled, but they were not early 
of any practical value. So long as game was in 
plentiful supply the laws were not invoked and in 
no case were penalties exacted of any moment till 
the laws were consolidated in '89 and the appoint- 
ment of game wardens in 1885. Subsequently 
thereto for many years a semblance of enforcement 
was kept up in Chicago whose dealers took upon 
themselves the burden of seeing that the laws made 
were practically in their favor, and when the war- 
dens could get no remuneration in enforcing the 
laws, in time they became impatient and demanded 
some suitable recompense for lying still. Then the 
dealers bought their favors though they did not 
denominate them bribes. No one but the dealers in 
Chicago took the trouble and expense to go to 
Springfield and the law makers there passed what- 
ever was asked by three or four dealers carte 
blanche. As long as they could make the laws so 
that they worked entirely for their benefit they could 
afford to pay the wardens to stand still, but in time 
they demanded larger bribes. To save themselves 
the dealers concocted the plan of consolidating the 
trade within their hands and shutting out others, 
and by so doing, paying expenses out of the profits. 



GAME LAWS. 307 

This did not occur until 1896. Those who did not 
pay the wardens were prosecuted. Three or four 
men combined the trade in their own hands, and the 
amount of game seized from all shippers was very 
great. At that time it was not known that it was 
illegal to ship birds out of Illinois from October to 
February. If the law had been actually read and 
so considered, it was difficult to understand how 
that birds killed in Nebraska, transported to Illinois 
and then reshipped to New York, could break the 
law any more completely than it would have done 
to ship direct from Nebraska to New York. All 
the West was at that time draining its supplies 
largely into the lap of Eastern dealers and the scope 
of the trade seemed to widen and broaden percept- 
ibly. Before 1889 it was legal to ship to the East 
prairie chickens and quails till March, then it was 
narrowed down to February and all the dealers, 
both shippers and receivers, considered no impedi- 
ments in the way during that period. But when 
freezers began to play a" prominent part in the pres- 
ervation of birds, the older and abler dealers began 
to put away receipts in times of surplus and to 
bring them out later at a profit. Large stocks were 
carried over from month to month, and later than 
March or April, and were profitably sold in Boston 
and New York, often as late as May 1st. 

In the early '70's a Mr. Racey of New York City 
had constructed in Center Market a new plan to 
freeze birds and hold them, and he bought birds in 
December and January when low, and retailed them 
all out in the Spring as suited his fancy and profit, 
and he supposed that they were legal to hold both 
in time and place because they were his property 
and bought when the law permitted it, but the Game 
Club of the citv contested his claim and won their 



308 GAME LAWS. 

case on the plea that the law forbid having in pos- 
session after February ist, and that the law must 
be construed strictly, and as a consequence himself 
and business was practically destroyed. Then the 
dealers commenced to sell the birds on the quiet 
without disposing of their stocks faster than was 
profitable, and no trouble came of it until about 
1890. At that time Powell Brothers discharged an 
employee, who immediately made complaint that a 
large quantity of game was held in storage by them. 
This was seized and confiscated, and about $2,500.00 
was paid for illegal holding and selling. These 
prosecutions began to disturb game dealers more or 
less in the West, but as long as Chicago was open 
to a few dealers and Express Companies did not re- 
fuse to take game through to the East at any time 
when it was asked, it was felt that it would be 
policy to have the business adjusted and settled first 
in Chicago, and outside dealers worked in the lee 
of transactions that were known to be going on 
there. There were laws in Nebraska and Kansas 
which forbid transportation out of the State, but they 
were more or less neglected and shipments came 
from there as freely as usual. While this subject 
was- under consideration, early in the summer of 
1895, the storm which had been kept down in Chi- 
cago by liberal bribes or bounties, broke out in Ke- 
wanee. The game warden with deputies and con- 
stables appeared and claimed I had sold and shipped 
a box of game to a small station on the C. B. & Q., 
contrary to the statutes of the State, and conse- 
quently had made all the game I then possessed lia- 
ble to seizure. The law of 1889 prescribed that it 
should be unlawful to hold game after February 1st 
for purposes of sale. As I had sold one box which 
was not disputed, it was claimed that all the rest was 



KEEP AND SMITH. 309 

for purposes of sale. In the mean time the warden 
seemed to be more anxious to settle than to proceed 
against me, and suggested that if I would pay him 
$200 he would let up and go away. He read some 
papers in my presence but did not claim any arrest, 
but invited me to go down to Galva with him where 
complaint had been made for the Hinsdale shipment 
and where the case was to be called that day. What 
it really amounted to I never fairly understood, but 
after the warden had made his plea and court ad- 
journed it was stated to me that the case would 
come up for hearing in the circuit court in October. 
I gave the warden no money and offered him none, 
but the next day I thought it prudent to ask counsel 
of my lawyer who was sick in Wisconsin, whither 
I went, passing through Chicago. I did not stop 
in the City, but returned there the following morn- 
ing, when on going down to South Water street I 
was told there was a telegram awaiting me from 
the day before. I found this to be from my son 
saying that the game warden had returned and was 
going through the house, opening and taking out 
packages to the Justice office. I wired I would be 
down as soon as possible, but as my counsel was 
unable to come, I started to look farther. I ran on 
to F. M. Smith, whom I had known in the same 
business with myself and with whom I had dealt 
considerably in former years, and he said he could 
take me to a lawyer who did all his business. He 
would not be at all extravagant in his charges and 
would be an able man to conduct my defense. I saw 
him and he consented to come to Kewanee if I found 
that I needed him when I got home. When I re- 
turned I found my son had put the case in the hands- 
of J. K. Blish, but Mr. Blish thought that if he was 
not too high priced, I had better let the Chicago 



310 GAME TRIAL IN KEWANEE. 

lawyer come down. In the mean time the case had 
been adjourned by the Justice here till I could get 
home and make my defense. I wired the lawyer to 
come down. F. M. Smith wrote me that it was 
going- to be an important case and asked me if he 
had not better come down also. I answered him 
that I did not need him. Nevertheless on the after- 
noon of the day previous to the trial, both Keep, the 
lawyer, and Smith came on and proceeded to make 
themselves merry with benzine and to inform every- 
body far and near they met what an 'important case 
would be called in the morning. When the case was 
called Keep followed the witnesses with great as- 
siduity, few sentences passing without rising the 
peculiar words, "I object." His versatility on the 
floor was melodramatic. Sometimes we thought he 
had started out on a cake walk, or was about to exe- 
cute some new dance. When he had got his argu- 
ment well in hand, he swung it around like a club 
with such vehemence, the audience became dizzy 
with his repetitions, and it was a delight to them 
when he sat down. Doubtless he meant it to be well 
shaken before taken. The case was argued through 
the day and evening, and taken under advisement 
until the following morning, when contrary to all 
belief and all law the Justice convicted me and put 
me under ten thousand dollar bonds for trial in the 
County or Circuit Court. Several packages which 
were made of galvanized iron and air tight were 
broken into and some of them were partially thawed 
but they were allowed to be replaced in the freezer 
and were not materially damaged, and all of them 
were permitted to remain, under the assurance that 
they would not be disturbed by us until the call of 
Court and subject to its order. 

Lawyer Keep at the trial did not show any re- 



GAME TRIAL AT CAMBRIDGE. 311 

markable talent or skill in addressing the court as 
he was evidently under the influence of drink, but 
when next morning he started for the train to go 
home, he had revived far enough to put in his bill 
for services, which he said was $500, and on my 
protest of its being exorbitant he offered to reduce 
it to $400. I gave him $100 and told him I would 
write him about the balance in Chicago. Smith came 
up and walked down with us to the train. After he 
was gone, I sat down and wrote both to Keep and 
Smith and asked Smith to go and see him on pur- 
pose for me, if he would not reduce the remainder 
which he claimed down to $200. Smith replied he 
had seen him and that he would not. Keep also 
wrote me that if I did not send him $300 more in 
twenty-four hours, he would draw on me therefor, 
I concluded to let him draw, that is, by implication 
silently, and when the draft came it went back un- 
paid. 

Then the summons came for trial at the Circuit 
Court of the case in which Keep claimed $400, re- 
maining for his services at the preliminary trial. 
It transpired before that time, that Smith and Keep 
went int©ail agieementduring that preliminary trial, 
in which I now believed that the whole stock of 
game which was seized would be sold in Kewanee, 
and Smith was to be the first to buy in the whole 
stock at nominal prices and take it to Chicago, while 
Keep was to make out an enormous bill and get the 
cash out of it for his services. If they had shunned 
the saloons they might not have gone entirely astray. 
In October the case came up before a jury. There 
were only three witnesses, two for Keep, being Smith 
anel himself, while I myself was entirely unsupport- 
ed. Manifestly the preponderance of evidence would 
be on their side, and as Smith and Keep swore posi- 



312 GAME TRIAL CONTINUED. 

tively that I agreed to pay the remaining $400, the 
jury felt the gravity of the case very keenly. The 
two witnesses were asked if I did not correspond 
with them in regard to a reduction of the charges 
after they returned to Chicago, and they said I did 
not, that they never heard from me after they left 
Kewanee. After further questioning, Smith admit- 
ted he believed I had written something to him about 
it but would not admit the talk of any reduction. We 
showed by the testimony of several witnesses that 
Keep was of little or no value to me as counsel, that 
he was more or less under the influence of liquor, 
and as one witness expressed it, "had on a jag," all 
of which the jury rated at its full value, but they 
were impotent to overcome the combined evidence 
of the two witnesses. At this point the unexpected 
happened. We had subpoenaed two witnesses who, 
on coming to court, and being questioned, did not 
appear to throw any additional light upon our side, 
and we allowed them to go home. The plaintiff's 
assistant, Ladd; caught that up as a proof that they 
would be useful to them, and asked the court for a 
recess in the evening till nine o'clock the next morn- 
ing, when they said they would certainly be able to 
produce them, and the court granted their plea. I 
had previously been telling my counsel that the wit- 
nesses statements were not true, that I had corre- 
sponded with each of them, soliciting a reduction 
and that I had letters at home to support the fact. 
I had intended to take them with me, but we drove 
across the country, and I overlooked getting them 
in the hurry of getting off, but the letters were not 
in hand, and the gravity of the case became more 
apparent. This recess gave us the desired opportu- 
nity and we sent by the same constable who had the 
subpoenaes for the returned witnesses, a request to 



GAME TRIAL CONTINUED. 313 

my wife to send over the letters, telling her where 
they were. They found only one but that was suffi- 
cient, inasmuch as it described my inquiry of Smith 
to go and see Keep for the desired reduction and 
which Smith said Keep would not grant. Re-en- 
forced with this letter, counsel read it to the jury 
when first called in the morning. The two wit- 
nesses did not appear and no further witnesses were 
called. The case was argued sharply on both sides 
and went to the jury. In a short time they returned 
and brought in a verdict for the defendant and in 
private assured me, that if the hundred dollars had 
not been paid, they still would not have allowed him 
anything. 

On this occasion Brother Comstock of the Cam- 
bridge Chronicle, bubbled over and indited some 
doggerel, parts of which we reproduce : 

"Well, Brother Merritt showed 'Keep some Henry 
County justice, thanks to the jury." 

"Keep is dear and Keep is cheap, 
You can tell seeing on the street, 
But he's- the consarnedest cheat 
In Illinois with legal feat. 

"Alas, alas for Mr. Keep, 

We'd think h'ed want a winding sheet, 
Or better far, a Rip Van Winkle sleep, 
And then he'd be a thing concrete." 

Before the time of the Circuit court to convene the 
State's Attorney conceived a plan of bringing me to 
trial on information and not by indictment, and 
thereby taking away the rewards from the Game 
Warden in case of conviction at its regular session. 
With this purpose in view, I was called to court 



314 GAME TRIAL FOR POSSESSION OF STOCK. 

early in the fall without the knowledge of the Game 
Warden, and although he was notified later he could 
not arrange to come nor would the State's Attorney 
wait for the Circuit Court. On this trial no wit- 
nesses were called, but those who had a part in the 
seizure of the box of game that went to Hinsdale, 
except my son, and he did not remember of any 
illegal shipments beside this. This was evidently 
illegal, and the jury brought in a verdict for the 
plaintiff for the amount of $5 for each bird con- 
tained in the box. This was the only judgment that 
ever was rendered against me in Henry County. 

In a few weeks the main call at issue between the 
warden and myself was the right of the warden to 
take or not to take away the whole stock of game 
which I had in my freezer, which he claimed. 
Scarcely any witnesses were called in this case, and 
the fact was discussed at considerable length, 
whether the sale of the box at Hinsdale was prima 
facie evidence that the balance of the stock was for 
sale. I was a witness and Ladd asked me if I had 
not within the last few months bought any game 
in the country round about, at Galva or at Atkinson. 
I replied that I didn't handle any birds from those 
places. "Well, then, is there not some place within 
the State where you have bought?" I answered 
"Yes." At this admission all eyes were open and 
the audience reached forward and pricked up their 
ears. "State, then," he said, "if you please, where 
you have bought in that time." I answered that I 
had bought birds that were shipped me from New 
Boston. "How many?" "Several boxes, but the 
shipper informed me they were brought from Iowa 
across the River." "Have you anything to show 
that he said so?" I said "Yes, I have a letter." 
"Let me see it," he said. I took it out and reached 



GAME TRIAL FOR POSSESSION OF STOCK. 315 

it towards him, when he said it didn't matter, he 
didn't care to see it. I was questioned no further, 
and the case was argued with no tangible evidence 
except of the one sale. The jury was out a .few 
hours, bringing in a verdict for the defendant. This 
decision was so unexpected to the plaintiff and his 
advisers, that it seemed for awhile to have thrown 
the game clubs off their balance. No further de- 
mand was made and I proceeded to sell my stock as 
usual. In October the quails were put on the 
market, a large amount of them and sold well. Prices 
continued high all the season, the highest for 
chickens and quails at that time we had ever known. 
Buyers took stock readily and put it into consump- 
tion. By the time the spring opened we had realized 
out of it over $20,000.00. During all this time the 
game clubs had not been entirely idle. They had 
raked the law over and over again to see if there 
was not some provision to stop this indiscriminate 
slaughter of birds. They discovered in the game 
laws the clause which permitted dealers to receive 
game from other States between October and the 
February following, specified for the sale of the said 
game "in the villages and cities of the State." This 
had heretofore been overlooked and it was not be- 
lieved that it would be illegal to ship out what was 
legally shipped in. If strictly construed, however, 
it did not permit birds to be shipped out of the 
state. Nevertheless, the effect would be that if 
dealers outside of Chicago could not receive birds, 
then they must either go direct to Chicago or New 
York. This law was not attempted to be enforced 
until the following year. If it had been enforced 
in 1895 the ruin of outside dealers would have been 
complete. The game dealers in Chicago were 
prompt to seize this opportunity. It gave them a 



316 WAS IT A CONSPIRACY? 

club by which they hoped to demolish the trade of 
outside dealers. Then how were they to escape 
themselves? They sought the Game Warden, they 
"ptivsuaded tun* to lie still and not to disturb their 
goods, while he seized all the goods of other dealers 
and put the proceeds in his pocket as far as he pos- 
sibly could. The business was consolidated in the 
hands of three or four parties. The rest of the 
dealers in Chicago stood still to see what was going 
on. If they had anything- it was confiscated, they 
could not or would not pay the Warden to let them 
alone. Game shipped to these three or four par- 
ties was taken care of. Large quantities arrived 
every day. Did it stop there? Certainly not. Chi- 
cago could not use one-third of all that arrived. 
Boxes were taken in and their contents transferred 
to new packages with new labels representing every- 
thing under the sun but game. Express Companies 
received them, and after a while shippers from out- 
side of the city could not get a pound past Chicago. 
Yes, they could. You could ship to these dealers, 
which you had a right to do, and they could trans- 
ship, but they demanded double commission, and 
every possible way of escape was used not to fall 
into their hands. The game business quieted down 
a good deal and the profits derived from confiscation 
were materially lessened when once it was found 
out. No further shipments were made to that firm 
and not every shipper found who they were that did 
receive game. When this- business dropped off so 
that the Wardens could not confiscate much more 
goods, their dividends were perceptibly lessened, 
and the premiums they received from these few 
dealers were hardly sufficient to support them, but 
the dealers could not do any better, they were al- 
ready robbed. Public sentiment was awakened. The 



ENFORCING GAME LAWS RAISES PRICES. 317 

Western States could ship directly to New York. 
This they proceeded to do, and the plum was rapidly 
disappearing from the dealers in the City. What 
was shipped directly to New York brought big 
prices with no risk whatever. What was sold in 
Chicago did nearly as well and the dealers flattered 
the shipper and dared the informer under cover of 
permit. They fought sharply with two-edged blades 
which cut off others, while it supported themselves. 
But public sentiment which had begun to accumulate 
for some time, now rose in revolt. The partridges 
of the States of Minnesota, and as far North and 
Northwest as the Railroads reached, were simply 
being annihilated. One or two dealers had con- 
trolled the market with such persistency, that an 
omnibus law only could save the birds which were 
crowded in in such quantities in the Eastern Cities, 
that they scarcely brought half they were worth. 
Both sides fought vigorously, but the State won and 
saved what game was left. Prices rose to a 
prodigious height, but the birds did not come. The 
leaks which all presumed certain to be found, were 
thoroughly stopped. Then in the following winter 
Kansas and Nebraska revived their old laws and 
put them in. shape to enforce them. For the past 
year or two birds are said to have increased con- 
siderably, particularly in Nebraska, and until the 
prairie grass is rooted out or the laws forbid shoot- 
ing small and immature birds they will continue to 
increase, or until population runs them out. 

We commenced shipping in the fall of 1896, much 
as we did in '95, but in much smaller quantities. 
The demand for game East was very urgent, but not 
at so high a figure as the year before. So many 
dealers had started up in the West, we had great 
difficulty in securing the supplies we needed. The 



3i8 GAME WARDEN SEIZES N. Y. SHIPMENTS. 

memory of the past year also operated as a spur. 
When we thought along in January we could spare 
a few barrels profitably, we did so and we sent them 
to New York by freight. We had some poor stock 
it was necessary to put off before spring and we 
sent these along with the sound birds. We sent 
them by freight. We were somewhat surprised to 
hear from Chicago that the first shipment of two or 
three barrels of prairie chickens had been seized 
by the Game Warden there, and we were so con- 
fident of our position that the shipment was legal, 
we put the case in the hands of a lawyer to collect 
damages from the Railroad. The birds were not 
taken under a warrant, and so far as we can learn 
the Warden sold them for his own account and held 
the profits. Neither of these two acts was legal, 
but the Railroad Company defended themselves on 
the plea that the goods taken were contraband and 
no damage was obtainable. We protested against 
the Railroad Company giving them up without a 
warrant, and in later seizures the Warden was com- 
pelled to use a warrant, in which case he could not 
sell the goods for his own benefit. We started on 
a new plan. We had orders for a line of goods 
which we wanted to move, and there being no< hurry 
for their use, we did not want to pay express charges 
upon them. It occurred to us that a poultry dealer 
who was shipping often might take the goods and 
forward them himself for us, and by marking the 
barrels poultry, they would escape the vexations of 
seizure and trouble and expense afterwards. The 
plan worked for once, then another shipment of 
seven barrels followed, and they were seized with 
a warrant. The Justice ordered the warden to hold 
them in cold storage till legal time elapsed before 
the sale. As soon as I found when that sale would 



WARDEN SUES FOR HEAVY DAMAGES. 319 

come off, I ordered a dealer to buy them if he could 
and they went below market price, but values were 
booming. The quail were in fine condition, two 
barrels of them and they sold at full price. The 
partridges were very poor, five barrels of them, and 
they sold for $1.00 per pair, double the value in any 
market that I knew of. We appealed the case and 
attempted to contest it, but it was called surrep- 
titiously without notice to us or any public an 
nouncement as there should have been, and we lost. 
There was a determination of the Court to give us 
as little chance as possible, and if we had succeeded 
then it is more than likely we would have lost later 
on. Smith conceived the idea that he could get us 
up there through the medium of a friendly letter on 
the plea that the dealers were going to make up a 
sum to pay my losses. We, however, did not go 
as we had lost all confidence in him, and when once 
off our base, we could not defend ourselves. 

The next move made by the Warden was either 
to indict me or sue for heavy damages. The seven 
barrels that were seized were carefully counted and 
on this count and some other imaginary counts he 
proceeded to sue me for several hundred thousand 
dollars. The birds sold realized some seven hun- 
dred dollars. Before I knew of the last seizure I 
had another shipment of five barrels on the way. 
These by quick action I secured in Chicago before 
the warden knew it and right under his nose, and 
transferred them not five minutes before he ascer- 
tained where they were. When the trial came on in 
the fall for offering to ship the game out of the 
State, a new Game Warden had taken the place of 
the old one. He was very sanguine of his success 
of connecting me with all the counts he had made 
up. The State's Attorney worked with him for all 



320 PROOF I SHIPPED ONLY AS AGENT. 

he was worth. The barrels of money the Warden 
said he would make, or had made, were not very 
definitely known by very many where they were to 
be found if he was to be believed. He came to town 
and examined the poultry man who shipped the 
game and who was always a ready tool for all such 
transactions that promised him dividends. How- 
ever, he did not appear at court, but in the appeal 
that afterwards was thought necessary, he testified 
that the reason I gave him for using his services was 
that it was illegal to ship. Nothing further from 
the truth could possibly be. I distinctly told him 
more than once, that the shipment was legal. Until 
the last shipment I had not looked carefully into the 
law and had not weighed the force of that provision 
which allowed game to be sold in the villages and 
cities of the state. I saw the situation now as I 
never had done before. The law clearly defined the 
provision, and while it appeared no different to ship 
direct than it would be to re-ship, if the law must be 
strictly construed, then I had no remedy unless I 
could show that I was an agent for the parties that 
bought the goods, and if I shipped for them then 
the burden fell on them, there where they could not 
be reached. In that case I was clearly selling the 
goods as I had a right to do in the markets of the 
State. The dealers in New York sent on orders and 
the burden of proof was for us. 

We took depositions from the men who had or- 
dered and they were altogether favorable. To the 
credit of the State's Attorney it may be said that he 
did not press the interlocutory hearing very smartly 
and when the case had progressed to the end of ex- 
amination of witnesses, we produced the depositions 
in which the two parties to whom the goods were 
consigned swore squarely that they bought the goods 



VERDICT FOR DEFENDANT. 321 

of me and ordered them shipped to them and that 
they were their property. The prosecution produced 
no other witnesses than those who received and 
counted the goods in Chicago, and the Railroad 
Agent that had shipped frequently barrels of goods 
for us. In these cases we showed that the shipments 
were of other game that was legal to ship or that it 
contained poultry. Previous to the trial, the 
Wardens had made repeated statements that they 
could show that I had twenty or thirty men con- 
stantly all over the County buying all the game they 
could get hold of, and that what was not in the fields 
alive was dead and in cold storage. So far was this 
from true, and so impossible to prove, that not a 
single witness to that effect was produced. Since 
1882 or '83 I had bought but very few birds of 
any kind in the State, had confined my purchases to 
West of the Missouri and to Wisconsin and Min- 
nesota and Montana, and had not had a man in my 
employ hunting for thirty years past, and then only 
once. The complainant argued very strongly that 
the place I made the sales was not a market place, 
that it was my duty to take the birds to the center 
of the city and there sell them, which clearly I had 
not done. The Judge set this point at rest, declaring 
that if my ice house, which had been used for thirty 
years for that purpose, was not a market, it was 
impossible to see where there could be one in the 
streets of Kewanee. The jury was out but a short 
time and brought in a verdict for defendant. This 
ended all litigation about game birds of any moment 
in Henry County up to the present time. We still 
had a good many birds in possession. If the New 
York law held good that all game held after Febru- 
ary 1st could be seized and there was no redress, 
then it would be fatal to the rightful possession of 



322 GAME DINNERS UNFASHIONABLE. 

birds at any time when it was not legal to kill. Fur- 
thermore that decision held that if there was a pro- 
viso of allowing five days to dispose of the goods 
in storage, that constituted an insuperable barrier 
against any claim for carrying them longer because 
the time was specific and the law must be strictly 
construed. We decided to dispose of what we had 
and in various ways we cleared the house before 
spring. The Express Company afterward in 'gy 
and '98 refused to guarantee safe arrival and since 
then all the State laws have been supervised by a 
Federal Statute which makes it legal to seize any- 
where game illegally shipped. Game went rapidly 
out of fashion. The hotels and restaurants refused 
for the most part to put it on their bill of fare and 
except for short seasons they will supply only what 
is brought to them by their guests. 

It now remains to be seen whether the promises 
that flocks of game will be speedily recouped to any 
material amount are justified or whether the prose- 
cutions were started too late to save them and were 
primarily to fill the pockets of the Game Warden. 

It also remains to be noted that if the law actu- 
ally sustains and is intended to sustain the right of 
seizure of any game reshipped from the State that 
had been allowed to come in under law, then the 
Game Warden which seized the game in the winter 
of 1896 must have been woefully off his job in not 
seizing our game in 1895. The law was the same 
as in 1896. Shipments were made in 1895 without 
any concealment and without any suspicion that it 
was illegal. The goods were plainly marked on the 
barrels what the contents were. They were shipped 
largely by express and many by freight. The busi- 
ness properly culminated that winter when we sold 
the largest amount of birds we ever possessed and 



GREAT NEGLECT OF THE GAME WARDEN. 523 

the prices were the best. In the few years that fol- 
lowed there was no year when prairie chickens 
would not sell wholesale at $1.75 per pair. The de- 
mand was great even at that figure and what does 
not often happen we sold small summer birds as 
high as $1.30 per pair. The goods were well kept, 
some of them for two years or more. If Smith had 
worked up his plans in the fall as he failed to do in 
the summer, there is no telling what might not have 
happened. If Smith and Keep had kept whiskey 
out of them, and taken the Game Warden in as a 
partner, they would most surely have accomplished 
their end thoroughly, such as con Id not come in their 
way again. They became back numbers by standing 
still. 



PART III. 

EVOLUTION OF THE GUN. 

The gun is an autocrat. It can make or unmake 
nations. It may be a toy a boy can play with, or a 
Krupp gun with its shot heard round the world. 
It has rung all the changes from joy to sorrow, 
despair and death ; it has been the herald of the 
birth of a Prince or the death of a warrior. It has 
set up new constitutions, it has dissolved old ones. 
In all the exigencies of war it has been the chief 
arbiter ; in commerce it has led the way to unknown 
seas, awakened the slumbering energies of dying 
or prostrate peoples and put them in the way of 
new discoveries and undying hopes, but it has had 
to bear the reproaches of war, the garments rolled 
in blood, the misery as well as the envy of those it 
has put down. Evil has followed the track of the 
good ; love has surrendered to hate and tragedy has 
been the end of triumph. Woman has been blessed 
and cursed with the same weapon. In the councils 
of the nations she has been honored and her rights 
upheld, only to be assailed and overthrown in the 
confidence and seclusion of home. Lavish as has 
been all its arts to destroy human life, its real serv- 
ice is to save it with the combined skill and inven- 
tion of centuries. Governments only can handle 
artillery and this formidable weapon protects state 
from state and nations at war with each other. The 
smaller arms are more scattered as their cost is 
minimized in the hands of individuals. They serve 
varied and important interests in the procurement 
of law and order, but they cannot reach the privacy 
of home and they cannot enact penalties before a 

324 



ORIGIN OF THE GUN. 325 

crime is committed. Hunting with fire arms has be- 
come a national sport. The history of the gun, 
however, does not begin with the field and forest. 
Game taking seems to have been a very early diver- 
sion for kings and princes. All the nations of the 
Old World that had vacant lands within their bor- 
ders, followed the chase with hawk and hound, and 
all the devices which they had of bows, arrows and 
spears, and of hunting lions, tamed and brought to 
such skill that animals and birds were readily cap- 
tured. From the employment of field sports to pur- 
poses of war the step was easy. The barbarians that 
came down from the North and overran the plains 
of Gaul and Spain and Britain and finally blotted 
out the Roman Empire, were just as active and in- 
dustrious hunters as were the cultivated peoples that 
dwelt along the Mediterranean. Fire-arms was not 
the invention of antiquity. The nearest approach 
after the beginning of the Christian era was the 
rushing, sputtering fire cracker of the Chinaman or 
the thundering noise of the Greek Fire. The in- 
vention of the Chinaman still survives through all 
the ages of more than two thousand years, and may 
be said to be co-incident with the remote origin of 
our present gun, which it anticipated but did not 
have the genius to discover. It is remarkable that 
the peoples who made war a pursuit, like the As- 
syrians and the Persians or the Greeks, who ex- 
hibited such skill in the fine arts of sculpture and 
painting, did not improve and develop the plainer 
arts which lay at the foot of chemistry rather than 
alchemy, or apply the important uses of iron rather 
than stone and bitumen and for a better purpose 
than walled cities and towers of Babel. 

The origin of the gun dates back to the thirteenth 
centurv, when the longf wars that shook the founda- 

r - 



326 GARDEN OF EDEN. 

tions of states had cemented or destroyed them in 
blood. Lighter and less effective weapons had pre- 
ceded and the student of history will fail to find the 
time or place when some form of warlike weapon 
did not exist. The Garden of Eden furnishes the 
background for all subsequent investigation of the 
character of the primitive man in the first weapon he 
had ever known. Weapons that kill are the living 
utterances of a nature that is brutal. Did then the 
curse of blood fall upon man as the blight of thorns 
and brambles fell upon the soil, so that his nature 
became simply rebellious against the Divine author- 
ity which drove him out of the Garden? We may 
well believe that the labor which was pleasant with- 
in became wearisome without and the curse that 
made man a vagabond, made him also an anarchist. 
What visions wrapped his soul we do not know, 
but Milton has pictured his despair in the glowing 

words of Paradise Lost : 

i 

"They looking back all the Eastern side beheld 

Of Paradise so late their happy seat, 

Waved o'er by that flaming brand. 

They, hand in hand, with wandering step and slow, 

Through Eden took their solitary way." 

The Bible text makes the brand a flaming sword 
"that turned every way to guard the way of the 
Tree of Life." Consider now the two delicate souls 
finely wrought by the finger of God going out as 
outcasts from the only home they had ever known, 
with nothingof skill of handicraft, encumbered with 
appetites that nature thrust upon them unsatisfied 
burning in their soul with distrust of everything 
they called their own, what else could we expect but 
that the spectre of blood should have been forced 



THE FIRST WEAPON A SWORD. 327 

into every fibre of their being. That terrible beacon 
light revealed to them a hand to hand encounter, 
against which Divine vengeance offered no prescrip- 
tion, rolling before their eyes in fitful gleams on the 
dark clouds where Nature had become hostile, the 
very weapon which in their bewilderment and con- 
sternation should haunt them and their posterity 
forever. 

From this primitive origin, through primitive 
nations the sword has descended practically un- 
changed to the present day. Doubtless the first 
weapon man used was the sword. Its use for do- 
mestic purposes soon came to be manifold. In the 
establishment of sacrifices it was a most pressing 
need. Abraham took it into the mountain with him 
when he was called to sacrifice his son Isaac. It 
had a double purpose in war for it was used in 
acts of offense and defense. The Israelites were a 
pastoral people dwelling in tents and moving from 
place to place as their herds found suitable sus- 
tenance. In time the herdsmen of one tribe came in 
conflict with those of a neighbor and war sprung 
up. Many a quarrel was ended and many a knot, 
was cut with the sword. Their neighbors were 
warlike and in a sudden attack might wreck their 
frail homes and send them out to perish in the 
desert. 

Fifteen hundred years before our era a colony of 
Hebrews settled in Goshen in Egypt. They came 
from the land of Ur of the Chaldees, on the right 
bank and near the mouth of the Euphrates, which 
empties into the Persian Gulf, and about seven 
hundred miles directly west from their starting 
point. These were afterwards known as the people 
of Israel. They remained in the country and multi- 
plied till a great famine prevailed and they were 



328 WEAPONS OF THE JEWS. THE BOW. 

compelled to purchase corn from the Egyptians, 
when they became bondsmen in Egypt. After four 
hundred years they were driven out, wandering 
along the Red Sea and the desert till they settled 
on the East side of the Jordan in Palestine, fight- 
ing the Canaanites and the Philistines who occupied 
the outside rim or shore of Phoenicia. In time they 
became large owners of land on both sides of the 
river and they met and intermingled with their 
neighbors in some sort of treaty for mutual protec- 
tion. Eventually they became a great nation and 
were ruled by a king, and Jerusalem was the 
metropolis of the Jews, which was taken and de- 
stroyed eleven times, up to and including its capture 
by Caliph Omar in 637 A. D. 

The weapons of the Jews were the same as that 
of the Assyrians and Babylonians in that the sword 
played a conspicuous part, and as was represented 
on their monuments. It was worn in battle on the 
left side and hanging at the waist as nearly level as 
possible. They had also lances, spears and javelins, 
as their sculptures exhibit, and in addition another 
weapon which was to become conspicuous for more 
than three thousand years, and goes far to show 
that its birth was contemporary with that of the 
sword. This was the bow, and archery grew up 
from its use and prevailing- practice. The primal 
man was alone, Nature was antagonistic. The bird 
flew ; man's arm could not reach or overtake it. The 
wild beast fought him or ran away from him. To 
capture either he must increase his own strength or 
diminish theirs. Swords were not always powerful 
to defend or restrain enemies, but they were singu- 
larly defective in pursuit. The spear and the jave- 
lin wore out the endurance of many lives. So far as 
they could reach they shortened space, as telegraphs 



THE ASSYRIANS. 329 

and telephones obliterate distance today. No war 
could hope for certain success with the sword alone. 
In the struggle with wild beasts, man was more 
frequently subject than lord. Prowess which was 
confined to physical endurance was no guarantee of 
success. The better weapon would be one that would 
reach the greater distance, or whose flight was more 
rapid. Man reasoned early that if he could em- 
ploy any specific quality of matter, the simplest even, 
that of the tree for instance, say its elasticity, in a 
weapon, he could surmount the fleetness of foot and 
wing. In this attempt he discovered the bow, and 
it may be said to occupy the middle kingdom be- 
tween the sword and the gun. The bow was the 
first weapon that appealed from hand to hand con- 
flict, and it would be easy to follow it in the im- 
portant part which it held, passing down through 
civilized and uncivilized races till the gun of mod- 
ern times took its place. Necessities of existence 
furnished the first weapons. As families grew and 
settlements were extended the whole earth was 
overspread with husbandmen, who for self defense 
made common cause for common interests and regu- 
lated and settled those of private individuals. In 
time the older and more capable individual was 
chosen to be a patriarch. These heads of tribes did 
not always agree with each other and they were 
compelled to fight for themselves or move away. 
No doubt Abraham moved from the early seat of 
the race and came into Palestine from this very 
cause, but the cause became efficient in a little while 
again, when he was fain to separate himself from 
Lot, giving him his choice, which fell upon the 
lands of Sodom. The Assyrians in their represen- 
tations of animals, and especially lions, chiselled in 
stone with great skill and accuracy, and their gold- 



330 USE SWORD AND BOW. 

smiths wrought the most exquisite articles of per- 
sonal adornment in their shops. We may recall 
Byron's mention of them in the lines beginning : 

"The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold. 
And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and 
gold." 

in allusion to the purple murex which the Phoeni- 
cians drew from the waves of Tyre and elsewhere, 
and to the current trade of the smiths, also, 

"The sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, 
When the blue wave rolls nightly o'er dark Galilee." 

The spear was a native weapon of the Assyrian. 
They early became noted for taking up arms against 
their neighbors. The inhabitants of Assyria were 
soldiers outside of Babylon whose people were in- 
clined to more peaceable pursuits and the exercise 
of the arts then known. They copied in sculpture 
what the soldiers exhibited in the field. The finest 
friezes ornamented their temples. The archers were 
shown drawn up in battle in close columns with 
their bows bent and ready to discharge and their 
faces exhibit the quiet firmness and assurance of 
well tried soldiers. The use of the sword was no 
doubt supplemented by the bow. Sacred history is 
full of exploits with the bow. Esau, it is remem- 
bered, took his savory meat with bow and arrow. Of 
Saul it is declared that the battle went sore against 
him, the archers hit him and he was wounded of 
the archers. Next to God David put his strength, in 
the bow. David and Jonathan's friendship was knit 
together by the trial of the arrows. The bow min- 
imized distance and time, but the sword has always 
remained an adjunct of war. It is a symbol of 
vengeance and its mandate is blood. It has followed 



PERSIAN ARMS AND XERXES. 331 

conquering armies always. It has reddened battle 
fields with slaughter ; it has sacked cities and filled 
with brutal lust the bosoms of the conquerors. Cities 
were razed to the ground and plowed up and the 
last spark of life was quenched with the sword. 

The oldest inhabitants in the historical period were 
the Assyrians. Their records are meager beyond the 
story of the monuments and one historian, Hero- 
dotus, with scattered allusions by one or two other 
writers. The subjugated lands to the East were 
too poor to furnish them the revenue they wanted 
and they turned their faces to the West to the 
wealthy peoples that had grown up since Abraham's 
time along the shores of the Mediterranean, and in 
a few years Judah had become subject to Assyria 
and Nineveh had become a great city till it was 
taken and burned by the Medes and Babylonians at 
the close of the sixth century B. C. and Cyrus the 
Persian became the great king. 

This vast kingdom between the Caspian Sea and 
the Persian Gulf was in a constant state of war, 
either with the mountainous Scythians on the North 
or with the Mongols and some mixed races on the 
East ; and with the repeated rebellions of Egypt, 
whose territory she claimed and lost and claimed 
again, the limits of Persia were often circumscribed 
into reduced areas by the fortunes of war, and she 
was no wise fitted for foreign invasion. Neverthe- 
less Xerxes in his desperate ambition led the larg- 
est army into Greece that ever had been seen under 
one command at that time, which the Greeks de- 
stroyed and the fleet and sent the trembling king 
a fugitive back to Asia. Xerxes' invasion occurred 
480 B. C. In the interval between that event and 
Alexander's conquest of 146 years the Greeks had 
been increasing and drilling their armies for the 



332 THE WEAPONS OF THE GREEKS. 

struggle and the punishment which she was to mete 
out to Persia in the overthrow of her possessions 
and renown. Alexander's conquest began in 334 
B. C. 

The Persians used the same weapons as the 
Greeks, but the weapons of the Greeks were better 
manned. The spear was the main weapon of attack. 

The sword came in when the enemy was halted 
or wounded. Moreover the bow cut a controlling 
figure with disciplined troops. The army of Alexan- 
der was fully supplied with weapons that it knew 
how to use. It was skilled in resources. Alexander 
was more than resourceful ; he knew the full value 
of food and clothing to an invading army. Besides 
the firm discipline he did not fail to impress upon 
them the fact that every dissatisfied soldier was 
privileged to return to his home. The glory of con- 
quest was held out to them in such glowing colors 
that pride in success overbore all fear of war. The 
bows he used had been thoroughly tried long before 
he invaded Asia. They were of yew of the utmost 
spring and of the length of nearly six feet. Only 
men of the strongest muscles could bring them to 
their full tension and constant trials and exhibitions 
had made skilled archers of them all. Their spears 
were long also, the length of eighteen or twenty or 
even twenty-four feet. They were drilled to form 
the Grecian phalanx of eight soldiers deep, or in 
emergencies to form them into sixteen. Withal the 
phalanx was a solid body with only limited spaces 
between the ranks and this was fully covered by 
projecting spears. The spears were like javelins 
which could be withdrawn after impact if no lodg- 
ment was effected. They were shod with iron 
points, while the Persians in the great scarcity of 
that metal used many substitutes which their inven- 
tion was able to create or supply. 



GREEK WEAPONS OF ALEXANDER. 333 

There is no doubt that Alexander was well pro- 
vided with military engines, scaling ladders and 
war chariots when he left his country. These were 
in no small degree the pride and power of the 
Grecian nation. With these he broke down the 
walls of Tyre and Gaza. His fleet followed along 
the shore till he had reached Egypt, where it is 
probable they were transported in the canal that 
was then built across the narrow isthmus to the 
Red Sea, from whence the fleet later passed on to the 
mouth of the Persian Gulf. Alexander's reputation 
had preceded him so that his march was easy. Most 
cities opened their gates. After a visit to the Libyan 
oasis and receiving divine honor he returned along 
the route to Phoenicia, then traveled eastward to 
the mouth of the Euphrates where his true expedi- 
tion against the kingdom of Cyrus, now in the 
hands of Darius, commenced. With the taking of 
Babylon, Susa and some neighboring cities and the 
death of Darius, he set out on that long journey to 
the North through the country now called Afghan- 
istan till he had reached the River Jaxartes, near 
which he built the Caucasian Alexandria, the second 
of that name, destroying all opposition as he went and 
taking tribute and coin of the cities he entered, then 
passing the winter on the Oxus, he started south- 
ward till he reached the Hydaspes, an eastern branch 
of the Indus, expecting soon to proceed down the 
Ganges, both of which rivers flow from the Hima- 
laya mountains where his soldiers refused to go 
farther and decided him to return over another 
route down the Indus to the Persian Gulf. Only this 
refusal of the army stopped his march to the Indian 
Ocean. What cities he visited at the extreme limits 
c»f this route is not known, but his soldiers reported 
that they passed near the Indus one so well de- 



334 ALEXANDER'S INVASION. 

fended with a species of fire thrown from the walls 
that prudence forbade their attack, and it is sur- 
mised that it might have been the original Greek or 
Chinese fire. Alexander was warned not to enter 
Babylon but he persisted and entered and in a 
drunken frenzy perished at the age of thirty-three 
and after an absence of 1 1 years from Greece. In 
this time he had traveled over four thousand miles 
and taken as prizes from the cities he captured over 
fifty millions pounds sterling. In it he became ac- 
quainted with all the trade routes which had been 
established before the conquest which led into China 
or India. It is certain no natural barriers of wood 
or wild opposed his passage. He followed rivers 
when he could, he crossed them when he needed ; 
the great plains and water sheds disappeared be- 
hind him as the nations fled before him. Wan- 
dering tribes surveyed him in the distance as the 
coyote looks down from the hills upon the weary 
traveler. The gates of the Caucasus trembled with 
his phalanx -to the shores of the Hindu Kush, across 
which he swept for twelve hundred miles to the 
Gulf, not a man, not an army save the worn out 
and disheartened Darius and the feeble Bessus, 
whom he left early in his journey, blocked his way 
at any time. No wonder when he surveyed the 
route he had traveled and the dangers he had over- 
come he began to believe with the oracle in the 
oasis that he was the son of Zeus and not of Philip. 
H]e had smitten Persia with the heel of a con- 
queror, had repaid his country a hundredfold for 
the crimes of Xerxes, but his ungoverned self stood 
before him which he could not shake off. 

Where were his victories? We shall find them 
mainly in Alexandria, the Egyptian Alexandria, 
which has been the metropolis for the commerce 



ALEXANDER'S INVASION. 335 

of three continents for 20 centuries. In the library 
which established his fame till Omar, the Caliph, 
set it on fire. In that Scythian wilderness hitherto 
unexplored and unknown save only from the in- 
numerable hordes that issued from its prolific 
bosom, presenting a continual menace for centuries 
from Kanush to the Yellow Sea. In those immense 
stores of coin which the Persian kings had been 
hoarding for centuries, and which now became the 
prize which the succeeding generals carried to their 
native land to redeem it awhile from decay. And 
lastly, the great scope which his invasion covered, 
more than two thousand miles from Macedonia, 
throwing alien peoples in contact, in morals, in pri- 
mitive inquiries in science, in universal acquaintance 
with each other which the succeeding despotisms 
never entirely lost. Alexander was a mighty sequoia 
among the trees of the forest, but its branches were 
broken and scattered, its heart decayed and over the 
sapless trunk parasitic plants had builded bowers of 
green leaves and hidden its squalor. On the top- 
most spire the woodpecker with its flaming crest 
tapped the hours, tap, tap, tap, and in the silent 
pauses heard the echoes like a bell tolling the death 
of the monarch. The grey wolf heard the dropping 
debris and listened for a while as it fell piece-meal 
from the rotting limbs, then trotted away in the 
shadows. Obscured in silence and mystery the 
trunk shrank away, a lifeless mass, till a sudden 
gust swayed it to one side, when with a groan it 
broke and in one mighty crash which rung- in 
countless peals through the woodlands, it fell 
crushed into fragments. 

Suppose that Alexander had changed the route 
of his invasion and had gone Westward rather than 
to the East, what obstacles would he have found that 



336 IF ALEXANDER HAD GONE WESTWARD. 

he did not find in his campaign against Persia? 
Would Italy have stood in his way? Why, it was 
but four hundred years since it was established on 
the Tiber, and the first inhabitants who settled along 
the sea coast were Greeks. Many of the inhabitants 
were Greeks, and their sympathies were all with 
their own nation. The government was made up of 
robust men and well drilled soldiers, but the army 
had not the solidity nor the unity and discipline 
of a despotic leader like the son of Philip. Like 
all constitutional governments, the different func- 
tions were filled with men of short service, and as 
when Caesar came later any ruler would have found 
it impossible, as Caesar did, to cut loose from his 
base unless he cut loose from the government and 
became a dictator. No doubt exists that Alexan- 
der had conferred with Kraterus many times on 
the subject of universal empire. His cavalry would 
have been more than a match for his Italian neigh- 
bor, his weapons at that time were equal to the 
best, and he would have been so close to his base, 
he was virtually on home soil. Then he would have 
crossed the mountains and Gaul and Spain would 
have been at his feet, when he could, have swung 
around into Germany, passed the Rhine, and fol- 
lowing the Danube, been on the confines of Europe 
and Asia, whither following the line of the Black 
Sea he could have overrun the tribes of the Cau- 
casus, trodden the plains of Scythia, which he had 
so long planned, and renewing his old route through 
Persia would have soon been on the Gulf. Then 
he would have taken the advice of Pharasmanes, 
the Chorasmian Prince, when he passed through 
Bactria on his expedition, and passing up the In- 
dus to the Hydaspes would have crossed to the 
headwaters of the Ganges and following it to its 



EGYPT. 337 

mouth washed his foaming steeds in the Indian 
Ocean. If he had not done this he would have 
turned to his left in Gaul, passed through Spain, 
across the Gibraltar into Africa, where he would 
have been welcomed in Egypt, the oracles would 
have pronounced his origin divine, and Arabia 
would have been the last stand, instead of the first, 
for human freedom, as he had proposed when he 
perished at Babylon. Nothing less than the then 
known world would have met his ambitions when 
he came to believe he was of divine origin, the 
favored child of God. 

But what of the new dominions of Alexander 
which at his death embraced three continents, 
"From Macedon to Artaxexes' throne"? 
This mighty structure in its political unity fell to 
pieces in the space of two years. In 80 years do- 
mestic discord sprang up worse than a Kentucky 
feud. The several parts of the Asiatic confederacy 
broke into petty kingdoms and provinces and formed 
governments of their own. Then the barbarians 
attacked them separately from the north and east. 
South of the Caspian sprang up the Parthian,, until 
he spread his kingdom over the great plain of Baby- 
lon and the Tigris valley. The Bactrian disputed 
for the lands along the Indus and the regions ruled 
by the Indian king Porus. Northward and eastward 
he extended his sway into Sogdiana and the region 
south of the Oxus. Only in the southwest, in Egypt, 
did Ptolemy remain faithful to the Greeks. Bactria 
united with Parthia, and now commenced that strug- 
gle with Rome which lasted for near five hundred 
years till the latter obtained the sceptre of the world. 
Macedon fell to the Romans B. C. 168, Greece prop- 
er, 146 B. C., and Carthage the same year, but 
Egypt, which had been plundered so long by the 
Persians, remained faithful to the successors of Al- 



333 EGYPT. 

exander for three centuries till the Romans estab- 
lished suzerainty over her about thirty years before 
the Christian era. In that time Egypt acquired a 
prosperity which she had never before known. 
Scholars flocked to Alexandria as they had before 
flocked to Rome or as they later flocked to Constan- 
tinople. The art of war had not lost any popularity, 
neither had it gained any decided prestige. No new 
discovery had been made or new invention perfected. 
It is certain the conquered nations laid none down at 
Alexander's feet. .Such an occurrence would have 
given a captive immediate liberty, would have put 
him at the head of the army or clothed him with 
imperial authority. 

Egypt was a land of antiquities, mellow as wine 
with age and ripe with the treasure and tilth of a 
bountiful sun. From her open throat sprang the 
lewd and luscious tongue of the Nile, lapping the 
seas between two mighty cheeks of sand. 

The earliest ambition of the Egyptian was to rest. 
If not in this world, at least in the world to come. 
For this they built those pyramids, to cover their 
mortal remains, which they fondly hoped would 
be imperishable. They wrapped the decaying body 
with many folds of linen filled with gums and 
spices, and enclosed in coffins doubled and trebled, 
resting in a stone sarcophagus of great weight 
placed in a mortuary chamber, sealed and secured 
by immense stone slabs in the heart of the pyramid. 
They hid away in the walls statues of the dead, 
often in great number, that in case of the loss of 
the body the soul could return and find its contin- 
uance in the image without reincarnation in beast 
or reptile. From puberty to old age they began or 
continued to lay aside the cerements of death, and 
the skill of king and architect was sought to make 



PHOENICIANS. 339 

the chambers of the dead unknown and inaccessible 
to the living. They gave their labor to bondsmen, 
their leisure to the Nile, dreaming away in the 
lassitude of sultry hours of the rich harvests which 
flowed unearned from her prolific bosom. 

The Egyptians were early acquainted with the art 
of warfare. Their army consisted of two divisions, 
a cavalry and an infantry force. The war chariot 
with its 'archer and charioteer, and the heavy foot 
soldiers with shields and spears, swords and battle 
axes, and the light infantry with bows and axes and 
sometimes slingers, with their arrows tipped with 
flint. Since the conquest the soldiers became more 
familiar with the use of the weapons as they be- 
came more abundant. Forges prang up for their 
manufacture in Syria and Palestine. Iron could be 
obtained everywhere in trade with the Phoenicians. 
Grecian supremacy was rather courted than avoided 
and the monarchy of the Pharaohs, which had last- 
ed for three thousand years, passed into Greece 334 
B. C, and there remained till it was overtaken in 
32 B. C. by the rapid rise of Rome. The prophecy 
was to be fulfilled, the reigning princes of the 
blood ceased. As it was written, "There shall be 
no more a prince of the land of Egypt." 

Outside of Egypt was Phoenicia, whose fortunes 
always rose or fell with hers. It occupied a narrow 
strip of land running north and south along the 
Mediterranean, about two degrees of latitude in 
length and joining Philistia or the land of the 
Philistines on the south, and reaching the mouth of 
the Orontes on the north, at the time of the Per- 
sian supremacy and of its greatest prosperity. 
They called themselves Canaanites and were early 
known by the adjoining nation for their skill in 
navigation, their success in the industry connected 



340 PHOENICIANS. 

with the purple miirex which formed the basis of 
the Tyrian purple, in mining of gold and silver, 
especially in Spain and some of the isles of the 
Aegean, and more than all their traffic in the wares 
from one country to another in ships and caravans. 
They were pre-eminently traders and had no dis- 
tinct purpose of acquiring territory. They opened 
and maintained trade routes through Persia and 
Arabia and Egypt, and followed the traffic on both 
sides of the sea to the ocean. They furnished ships 
and fleets on notice, now for Egypt, now for Per- 
sia, and now for Alexander. At the time of his 
return he ordered a new fleet from them, of ships 
equipped and sent to Thapsicus on the Persian gulf. 
They were early in the employ of the Romans, but 
they acknowledged the sovereignty of Egypt till the 
Roman arms overthrew Greece. They built but 
one great city, Carthage, and with it the Romans 
were at war from the days of Hannibal, one hun- 
dred and eighteen years, till the city was destroyed 
and ploughed up by the Romans. Along this high- 
way by the water's edge had passed the Babylon- 
ian, the Assyrian and the Persian and Greek war- 
riors from the earliest history. It was not distant 
from the early home of the Hebrews. It was the 
borderland of the children of Israel who yet dwelt 
there and with whose history was interwoven the 
remembrance of the calamities that had befallen 
that people. The conquest of Alexander gave new 
life to their traffic eastward. The Greeks went and 
dwelt in the land which Alexander had conquered 
from the time of his invasion till his return, and 
they developed many of the arts which made inter- 
course with that people profitable. The Persians 
saw their opportunity as their kingdom revived. 
They grasped at the rich merchandise that came 



GREECE AND ITALY. 341 

from China., and what they could not deliver direct 
to the rich cities of the south and west they turned 
over to their enterprising neighbors, the Phoeni- 
cians. By the opening of the second century B. C. 
the Bactrians beyond the Euphrates, though nomi- 
nally subject to Greece, carried their arms along 
the Indus and into part of China, and even to the 
ocean, and brought from the new lands cocoons and 
manufactured silks, the spices of Malabar and 
Formosa, and they traded in sulphur and bought 
costly furs and garments and many other things 
which art could covet or wealth procure, and these 
with the products of Persian looms, flowed in a 
steady stream westward to a bountiful market. 

The Phoenicians confined themselves largely to 
the trade route along the sandy desert six hundred 
miles from the port on the Persian Gulf to Egypt, 
while the Persians followed north of the Caucasus, 
up the Cyrus and down Phasis to the Black Sea 
and the Hellespont. Over these routes sprung up 
the traffic which brought to the knowledge of the 
Greeks and Romans the Greek or Chinese fire which 
was the basis and the nucleus of modern fire arms. 
But this was not to appear very soon. Dying na- 
tions carry no inventions to perpetuate their mem- 
ory. They may seclude themselves beyond moun- 
tain ranges, but no sooner does prosperity commence 
than the barriers are broken, and the hermit nation 
must throw open its gates or pass into oblivion. 
The Roman world was now entering on its scene of 
triumph. The wild tribes who inhabited the great 
plain of Italy seven hundred years before it was 
parceled out and occupied had become consoli- 
dated in one great confederacy at Rome. Two 
promontories here side by side jut out into the 
Mediterranean, the Grecian and the Roman, "two 



342 ROMAN ARMS IN FIRST CENTURY. 

whelps that lick up the ocean foam." The Greek 
empire was largely bound up with the Roman. 
Greeks first colonized the shores of Italy. The 
courage, the resources, the discipline of that mighty 
kingdom of the son of Philip had passed into Ro- 
man hands. Rome had ennobled the march of 
Alexander by giving the surviving cities the free- 
dom which he had denied them. She was a con- 
queror more for dominion than for rapine or plun- 
der. All she asked was tribute and to take and 
keep the name of Romans. She put into' their 
hands Roman arms, and in time expected them to 
adopt the Roman language and the Roman dress. 
In this she copied the habits and manners of Greece 
whose colonies first built up the cities of the Medi- 
terranean. Roman policy was more humane and 
enlightened, and the Western promontory was des- 
tined to play a more conspicuous part in history as 
it did not so completely abridge the freedom of the 
individual. 

The legion represented the matured service and 
conspicuous success of the Romans. That Rome 
formed and reformed her legions in such a way 
as they were superior to the Grecian phalanx there 
is no doubt, but she could never have broken that 
formidable organization by brute force without the 
employment of superior tactics. 

The early Roman sword copied the form and 
quality of other ancient nations. Strange as it may 
seem there is no distinct statement just what it 
was, but on the monuments of the first century B. C. 
it was a short weapon worn on the right side, sus- 
pended from the shoulder in contradistinction from 
the Assyrians, who wore it on the left. The blade 
was from twenty-two to twenty-four inches in length 
and double-edged. Later it was made longer and 



ROMAN ARMS IN FIRST CENTURY. 343 

sometimes with single edge. The main weapon, 
however, was the pilum, which was a species of 
pike about twenty inches in length, of iron with an 
iron knob for a head, attached to a shaft twice its 
length, and which when thrown against a shield 
pierced it and fastening thereto, the heavy iron bent 
under its weight to the ground, uncovering the head 
and body and leaving them exposed to the sharp 
sword of the enemy, which meant certain death. 
The sword when brought against it was hacked and 
broken or rendered useless. At this period so little 
mention, or so little use is made of the bow, as 
also it is by the Greeks, that it would appear to have 
lost its favor, but that the two nations used it there 
is no doubt. The bow would shoot many times 
beyond the limit of the spear or pilum and when 
the archers- were placed on the wings or in front 
they did great execution. In its proper use it was 
necessary to fortify its point with iron, and while 
the western people did not have it, or only in small 
quantity, in the east it could be had anywhere and 
became an object of traffic as commerce increased 
and wealth multiplied. It is doubtless a fault that 
the Romans did not appreciate the bow more fully. 
The time came when the Franks beyond the Alps 
repented the want of it, and were driven to increase 
their store at a very inopportune moment, while 
the Roman leaders suffered great distress through 
its scarcity in the latter days of the Empire. There 
were also 1 the cuirasses and the helmets which made 
the Roman soldier the envy of his comrades. Some- 
times the former were supplied only to the chiefs. 
The helmets usually were of metal, though some- 
times they were formed of leather or linen on which 
were sown circular plates of metal, and which 
early covered almost the whole body. In this case 



344 ROME AND JULIUS C^SAR. 

the weight became very cumbrous with the round 
or convex shields, so that the common soldier 
sometimes succumbed under it, and later was one 
of the causes of the fall of the Empire, in that 
the enervated soldiers refused to use them and 
threw them away, delivering their naked bodies to 
the spears of the barbarians. 

It must not be supposed that the arms enumerated 
are associated with the beginnings of a great empire. 
Rather they are the result of the skill and discipline 
which had continued for centuries and had yet to 
carry them as conquerors to the ends of the then 
known world. They represent the whole science of 
warfare up to the time of Julius Caesar. The legion 
had supplanted the phalanx. The victories that fol- 
lowed Caesar's arms show us conclusively that he 
found no weapons superior to those that were Ro- 
man, and now that the great arteries of travel to 
the East had to be gone over again, their superior- 
ity was a necessity. The Roman eagles were borne 
along the highways that Grecian industry had 
builded and Grecian arms had defended. The Per- 
sian, rising up like a lion in his lair, was anew the 
inflexible foe of the Empire. Macedon was now 
Roman. Through it the legions were set in mo- 
tion, on through Thrace to the Hellespont. They 
traversed Asia Minor and were again on the high- 
way that skirts the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, now 
reduced cities lying in magnificent decay. Gradual- 
ly the Roman soldier pushed his way to Persia and 
Armenia, and across the Euphrates till five prov- 
inces were added to the empire. There he stopped 
when he had reached the end of his old dominions, 
the ultima thule following the footsteps of Alexan- 
der. If he had gone a few leagues farther he 
would have struck the domain of the Parthian, with 



ROME AND JULIUS C^SAR. 345 

whom in after years he was to have a terrific war. 
But the enterprise was all too costly, the provinces 
were too far distant, the fruits too barren, and the 
successive emperors from Octavian to Traj'an held 
with a feeble hand the subjugated lands which they 
would have been glad many times to give away. 
In 66 and 67 B. C. Syria and Palestine were an- 
nexed to the empire by Pompey, who it was said 
entered the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem, and these 
two with Egypt became the faithful dependencies of 
Rome when the Grecian supremacy came to an end. 

Rome was now the mistress of the world ; she 
had held Spain from the time of the Scrpios ; her 
authority extended from Greece westward along 
the banks of the Danube and the Rhine. She was 
planning a military expedition beyond the Alps. 
The Christian era was about to dawn and the streets 
were soon to be filled with "Parthians, Medes and 
Elamites and the dwellers in Mesopotamia." A 
Christian martyr was soon to appeal to RJQme. Was 
the cruelty and bloodthirstiness of the emperors to 
increase or decrease with this new religion as its 
diffusion extended through the Roman Empire? 
The world shuddered at a Caesar but it acknowl- 
edged his the best government that was known. 
If the dagger of Brutus had not fallen Christianity 
would have been tolerated before Constantine. 

Julius Caesar represents everything that was 
known of military science anterior to the Christian 
era. He was altogether too wise not to be famil- 
iar with all of the most deadly weaopns. In this 
respect he competed with Alexander, in personally 
inspecting all the arms which his soldiers carried, 
but he was the greater tactician and he performed 
evolutions more numerous and complex than were 
known by the Greeks. His movements were not 



346 HE ATTACKS GAUL AND BRITON. 

controlled by violent paroxysms of passion or bursts 
of sorrow. He does not seem to have been ruth- 
lessly bloodthirsty, and he created the jealousy only 
of weaker nations that were ambitious of his fame. 
His life was mostly spent in the camp and his first 
exercises were in the overthrow of the pirates on 
the Mediterranean. When he became consul he 
was entrusted with an army which was directed 
westward over that vast ridge of the Alps which 
Hannibal scaled when he broke into Italy during 
the Punic wars. He was now to be introduced to 
the wild and mostly unknown nations of the north, 
who were described as barbarians and who, becom- 
ing dissatisfied with the frozen and unproductive 
regions they inhabited, sought to conquer and dis- 
possess the present owners and transplant their 
own families where they could enjoy the rich boun- 
ties of a warm sun and fruitful soil. Caesar's 
record of eight years, from 57 to 49 B. C, is the 
most remarkable in history. In that time he had 
subdued the whole of Gaul, now France, except the 
Greek city of Massalia in the southeast, had driven 
all the tribes who had crossed the Rhine back to 
their native home or destroyed them, had made two 
expeditions into Britain, and while not entirely suc- 
cessful had been able to hold most of the island, 
had checked and broken a rising conspiracy at home 
in an absence of only fifteen months, and had writ- 
ten that compact and graphic history of the nations 
whom he had met, which has come down to us in 
his Commentaries. Here he had inscribed all the 
rude arms and arts that the barbarians had invented, 
and we find no trace of any discovery which could 
supplement or supplant the accredited weapons of 
former times. 

There is one fact, however, to be noticed. The 



IRON AND THE WEAPONS OF BRITAIN. 347 

Britons contested the advance of Caesar's arms with 
war chariots, where the Romans appeared without 
them. It is not possible they were ignorant of 
them. They certainly had been used by Eastern 
nations, especially the Greeks during the time of 
Alexander's conquest, and they were in common 
use in the games of both Greek and Roman. It is 
possible that for the present the Romans depended 
chiefly on their swords and spears, the latter of 
which the Caledonians used as also clubs, while they 
do not seem to have had bows, which if they were 
used at all were only in a limited way against the 
Romans. Now the war chariot shows a more ad- 
vanced state of military efficiency and inventive 
skill than the bow which is common to most un- 
civilized people, and which does not require much 
outlay of iron. They had iron but it was scarce 
and clumsily extracted from widely separated mines. 
It seems quite possible that the Phoenicians con- 
structed and introduced those moving vans which 
were often armed with scythes among the Celts or 
ancient Britons. Such a vehicle could produce 
great consternation in an attacking army. The 
Phoenicians are known to have come to the Scilly 
Islands for tin and doubtless to Cornwall, the moun- 
tain side of the island, where tin was abundant and 
which they could reach following northward after 
passing through the straits of Gibraltar. It was 
in line with their trade to build anything they could 
sell or transport, and while the nation had declined 
for three hundred years the fragments were glorious 
and their knowledge ancestral, and it is quite possi- 
ble that no weapon created for war would be for- 
gotten for centuries. We know with what zealous 
care the Romans preserved the temple of Janus on 
the Tiber, which contained the arms of the soldiers 



348 ROMAN WEAPONS. 

which came back covered with glory from the war. 
Troy was captured in 1184 B. C. and Alexander, 
when he started out to conquer the world, made a 
visit to the Troad, where the bones of the Trojans 
reposed, and was shown the shield of Achilles, now 
over eight hundred years old, and it is said that 
Caesar laughed when he was shown the sword 
which he had lost many years before on the battle- 
field. No doubt the Hebrew nation gave this trad- 
ing people the knowledge of war chariots. If not, 
the Greeks were in constant intercourse with them, 
planting colonies in the islands of the Archipelago 
and the coast of Spain, where immense quantities 
of gold were brought from the interior along the 
Guadalaquiver, so that some have contended it was 
the original Ophir. They sailed among all seas 
and into the ocean, only going so far from land as 
not to be blown from sight of it, and in one in- 
stance sailed around the Continent of Africa in the 
employ of the Egyptian king. 

In this expedition to Britain the Romans carried 
shields which the inhabitants of the island had never 
before seen. These were defensive weapons and 
the art of making and using them was held in com- 
mon with the Greeks, but while the shield was 
often very serviceable it was impossible to discharge 
an arrow at the same time, which required the use 
of both hands. The Romans carried the shield on 
the one arm while with the other they threw the 
spear. In latter times shields were confined to sep- 
arate ranks. 

Augustus Caesar, or Octavian, became ruler at 
the death of his great uncle, Julius Caesar, and un- 
der his reign Rome is considered to have reached 
the limit of her greatness. It was the boast of 
Octavian that he found the city brick and left it 



ROMAN EMPIRE DEFENDED. 349 

marble. His administrative ability was- exercised 
•largely in beautifying the city and keeping sur- 
rounding nations in check, but he was not a war- 
rior like Julius Caesar. He formed great armies 
and sent forth many legions but he seldom accom- 
panied them into the field, and as if to prove the 
theory that no government can be entirely success- 
ful without a military general who was a thorough 
patriot, a skillful disciplinarian and possessed of 
abundant resources, there broke into the Roman do- 
minions from north to south a horde of barbarians 
who in the next five hundred years were to perplex, 
vex, and at length destroy the Empire of the world! 
Had the former Caesar lived he would have treated 
them with such severity the borders of the Rhine 
and the Danube would have been respected, though 
his measures would have seemed harsh and cruel. 
At the time of his death he was preparing to pun- 
ish the Parthians, who had defeated Crassus beyond 
the Euphrates and captured and retained the Roman 
standards. These Octavian or Augustus secured 
by diplomacy, though it cost him a journey thither 
and twice he visited his legions in Gaul during his 
long reign. Beyond the Julian Alps and along .the 
wide expanse of the Danube and the shorter stretch 
of the Rhine he did not go, but his legions were 
there. These two rivers were the limits of the 
Empire and will measure the route which the bar- 
barians followed from the north to the south be- 
tween Scandinavia and the Black Sea. Beyond 
that lies t'he Caspian with the mountain ranges of 
the Caucasus between, whose defiles have been the 
barriers against which the barbarians have beat for 
ages. Around the Southern point of the Caspian 
is Armenia, which was the battle ground of Ro- 
man and Persian, before and after the Christian 



360 BRITISH WEAPONS. 

era, and between that province and Euphrates iay 
the home of the race. On the Eastern side of the 
Caspian, flowing from what is now the Scythian 
Gulf, in a direct line east on the 40th parallel, you 
will reach Cashgar beyond the Shan mountains and 
in the borders of China. This will give you the 
limits of the inroads of the Northern tribes whose 
attacks were so bloody and so costly to the Ro- 
mans. From the mouth of the Rhine to the mouth 
of the Danube is approximately one thousand miles, 
and from the Danube to the Scythian Gulf is nine 
hundred, and from the Scythian Gulf to Cashgar 
in China is one thousand more. With the exception 
of this last distance the Romans had to defend a 
borderland of over two thousand miles, to say noth- 
ing of England, an isolated country which was held 
until 410 A. D. during the wars of Alaric, the last 
of the Roman conquests and the first to be thrown 
away. Before this the Romans had learned what it 
cost to hold in subjection a country so distant, 
roamed over by plundering savages, always nu- 
merous and always near. Its seacoast was ravaged 
by pirates, who crossed to the mainland as occasion 
served, and who were little better and no worse 
than the tribes in the interior. In their extremity 
the Romans constructed two walls, which shut off 
the north part of the island, now Scotland, from 
the south, intending to keep north of its borders the 
wild tribes by two legions which constantly guard- 
ed the fortifications. 

We can judge something of the natives of the Brit- 
ish Isles that stone walls, however strong, could keep 
them within the limits their conqueror set for them. 
They had neither attacking nor defensive weapons 
and were ignorant of discipline. The Romans had 
the best arms the government could furnish and 



FINAL REFUGE OF THE BRITONS. 351 

their morale was kept up by approved rules and 
brilliant tactics. Their helmets were bright and 
clean, their cuirasses were pictures of art and heav- 
ily woven in colors, their shields of rough bull's 
hide within, plated without, boldly swelling out in 
the center, reaching a point where darts and 
spears were harmless. Homer describes Achilles 
at home polishing his splendid armor for battle. 

History describes the earliest migrations from the 
East as towards the Northwest, from the tablelands 
around the Caspian. These people were called 
Aryans, who must have carried their weapons com- 
mon to that country with them. It is a principle 
well established that no instrument of war is laid 
aside till a better one is substituted. The Caledon- 
ians in time exchanged their clubs for the arms of 
the Roman. The Goths, as we shall see, learned 
their weapons from the Greeks and not the Greeks 
from them. Our own aboriginal tribes threw away 
the tomahawk when a fowling piece was accessible. 
Tribes may go out and be lost, nations be absorbed 
and assimilated with their conquering brethren, but 
the last tie that holds decrepit nations is their arms. 
On this plea the early migratory tribes seemed to 
show little that distinguished the character of their 
ancestors in their old home in central Asia. Schol- 
ars see some peculiarities of the Sanscrit tongue in 
Celtic forms of speech which represent Tiu, the 
power of the sky, or Zeus of the Greeks, and which 
is further expanded to Tuesday, and Thor to Thurs- 
day. But the nations as Caesar found them were lit- 
tle better than naked savages ; as they fought with 
the invaders they seemed to rely entirely for their 
success in their ability to throw large and unwieldly 
masses of limbs or muscle without order or dis- 
cipline or protective arms against the skilled veter- 



352 GERMAN HUNTERS FIRST INVADERS. 

ans of the Empire. Their rapid overthrow was in- 
evitable. Had the combatants been equally arwied 
and trained they would have fought as "Greek 
meets Greek." In their homeland before their mi- 
grations their contests were less unequal, but their 
arms were much the same and each one supplied 
himself with the very best weapons he could af- 
ford. Often they engaged in battle to test the 
weapons of their adversary. The first man killed 
gave up his weapon and his adversary secured it. If 
its material or workmanship attracted his attention 
he retained it. If not, he threw it away, and there 
you may believe, it did not long await a claimant. 
The flying clouds of Cossacks of whatever name or 
race, the vultures that feed and fatten on the spoils 
of an army, devour or appropriate everything and 
destroy what they cannot use. 

The weapons of the early Britons were spears 
and battle axes and clubs. They had neither buck- 
lers nor shields, but neither the Romans nor the 
Teutonic invaders whom they resisted could drive 
them entirely from Britain. They sought refuge in 
Wales and Cornwall or the Highlands of Scotland, 
where they have remained almost to> the present 
day. There have been two countries in the world 
which have furnished vast swarms of Barbarians, 
who have left their native homes in the North for 
the softer skies of the South, and have crossed the 
line of invasion we have mentioned from the North- 
west to the Southeast, the Scythians eastward of 
the Black Sea and the Germans to the west and 
northwest. Germany is a land of woods. More 
than two-thirds of it was anciently covered with 
forest. The Wester and Hartz mountains give 
way to the great Thuringian Chain, running from 
northwest to southeast. This forest was then a 



THE FRANKS. 353 

park of wild animals. In Caesar's time there roamed 
the wild bull; bears and deer were frequent, and 
the elk had not as later followed the reindeer to 
the North. The rivers were a marvel. Within a 
circle whose radius would not exceed fifty miles 
three great rivers rise and pass to different parts of 
the Empire. Two of them connect, and a third only 
separated by the distance from Lake Constance to 
Geneva. By these a trader could reach the North 
Sea, the Western Mediterranean at the Gulf of 
Lyons and the Eastern at the Hellespont. Up the 
Rhine and down the Rhone, was a common expres- 
sion of traders one with another. The Phoenicians 
in an early day transported amber from the Baltic 
overland to the Danube, and both the Rhine and 
Danube were in constant use by the conquering 
Romans who had their legions to guard the passes 
and the frontiers. Nothing was known of the 
Germans till the time of Caesar. Then, as if their 
roving nature suddenly possessed them, there broke 
forth from the woods and morasses a swarm of ad- 
venturers more furious and persistent than sprang 
from the caverns of the Trojan horse. They were 
nomads and a nation of hunters. Did they not wor- 
ship Woden or the mighty Thor, which thundered 
as Zeus in the lands from which came their ances- 
tors till he sent them forth beyond seas to found a 
home in the West? Now, the Elbe and the Vis- 
tula were as sacred as Ida or Parnassus. Tinged 
and fed with this romance, they sought the warmer 
climes of the South. They rushed to the rivers and 
seemed determined to cross, but they had no boats 
and no knowledge of building them. They had 
little or no' iron, for its use was not needed save to 
point their spears. Some of them may have swam 
across, but many of them had their wives and chil- 



354 BOWS MOST COMMON. 

dren, which they transported only when winter 
came, making a highway of ice. The Amgles, the 
Saxons and the Jutes passed into Britain, while 
the Goths and the Vandals found a home across the 
Rhine in Gaul or Spain, or they descended the Dan- 
ube and in present Hungary founded them a king- 
dom which was not to cease till the destruction of 
Rome. An association of different tribes succeed- 
ed, which called themselves Franks, and they drove 
out of Gaul the newcomers, or incorporated them 
with them and established a government forming 
the present nation of France. These with the Huns 
from the east and north of the Chinese wall were 
the main tribes that attacked the Roman Empire 
east and west, from Caesar's time till 476, when 
the Empire fell, and these were called Barbarians. 
As Gaul was a dependency of Rome since its con- 
quest by Caesar and remained faithful till the decline 
of the Empire in the Fifth century, the tribes that 
invaded that country were as much enemies of 
Rome in that period as though they were encamped 
on the Rhine or the Danube, but in 410 Rome 
abandoned Britain, and in 448 withdrew her last 
army and advised the Franks to take care of them- 
selves, as Alaric the Goth was already at their gates. 
Twice the Goth overran Rome and sacked it till in 
552 the Gothic kingdom was destroyed by Justin- 
ian. The Huns were totally overthrown at Chalons 
in France a hundred years earlier, and the Vandals, 
after taking Rome once, were dispersed and lost in 
Africa after the fall of Carthage, and passed out of 
history one hundred years before the Saracen in- 
vasion in the seventh century. Clovis, the Frank, 
united the scattered tribes in a strong confederacy 
which sent tribute to Rome, which continued to 
claim a nominal sovereignty. 



SARMATHIANS AND SCYTHIANS. 355 

It is somewhat remarkable that the savage tribes 
here mentioned spread over a country a distance 
of two thousand miles, constantly in a state of war- 
fare and governed by leaders whose skill was often 
a match for the most cultivated races, found noth- 
ing to invent or increase the efficiency of the arms 
they carried. They simply fell into the use of the 
very weapons of the people they overthrew. What 
they did not have they learned to imitate, and by 
giving greater vigor, as the Romans lost it, they 
overmatched the genius which the latter possessed. 
They were slaves to the Roman arms, and so pleased 
were they to obtain them that they forgot their own 
interests in their haste to adopt them. 

Bows were on the whole the most useful weapon 
for all nations, but the more cultivated people early 
used them the least. The Franks in course of time 
improved them to cross bows, but they were not ac- 
tually a new weapon. The countries on both sides 
of the Alps armed their soldiers with swords and 
spears, and I apprehend that if a gun of .much 
greater destructive effects had been invented the 
majority of soldiers would have held to the old 
weapon, inasmuch as their personal bravery shone 
more conspicuous in the simpler arms. The re- 
maining nations which made incursions into South- 
ern Europe and Western Asia were the Scythians, 
Sarmathians and Mongols. When the Greeks first 
extended their trade north of the Black Sea in the 
7th century B. C, they found a very wide extended 
nation whom they called Scythians or Scolots. They 
extended west into Europe, where they were called 
European Scythians. Beyond them east were the 
Sarmathians, somewhat of the same characteristics, 
and lastly the Asiatic Scythians or Mongols,, who 
occupied the highlands along the Russian Steppes. 



356 SARMATHIANS AND SCYTHIANS. 

They occupied also for their dominions from early 
ages the plains of Tartary, reaching unto and some- 
times into Western China. The Scythians were 
masters of a large part of Northern Europe, long 
before the settlements of Greece and Rome. They 
were a pastoral people with flocks and herds, liv- 
ing in tents, moving about from place to place with 
their wives and children. Before Caesar's time they 
seemed to have lost their name and place, either 
from being incorporated with other nations or being 
overthrown by them. They were in the track of 
migrations from East to West, and as the Huns 
ran across only the Alani in their march to Europe, 
they may have withdrawn farther North, where they 
occupied lands under another name and out of 
reach of the wandering- tribes. They may have 
been related to the Avars, from the river Var, whom 
the Turks dislodged about 545 A. D. Certain it is 
the Huns found no Scythians on their way to Eu- 
rope and the Danube, where the remnant that was 
not cut to pieces by the Turks finally landed. 

The Sarmathians were a limited people, east and 
west of the Don and north of the Caucasus, while 
their larger neighbors spread from the Vistula to 
the Volga. The Sarmathians had little iron and in 
their emergency they invented a sort of cuirass 
formed of horses hoofs, which resisted the sword 
and the javelin. These hoofs they cut up into thin 
slices overlapping each other like scales, and strong- 
ly sown on coarse linen. The quivers of their bows 
were filled with arrows pointed with fish bones 
dipped in poison. They fought on horseback with 
bows and arrows as well as spears, but they made 
no lasting impression on the lands of the South to 
permanently occupy them — neither they nor their 
Scythian neighbors, but were like the Bedouins of 



ENGLISH BOWS AND ENGLISH ARCHERS. 

the plains, at home anywhere when night falls. 
The Scythians were always distinguished by their 
bows and from being a Tartar tribe were sometimes 
called Tartars from the extreme length of that 
weapon. It was often of the length of six feet and 
their arrows were proportional. All the country 
east to China and even China itself affected these 
large bows, and the Chinamen styled their invaders 
from this country as "great bowmen." 

With this statement we might stop and declare 
that offensive weapons seem to end where they be- 
gan, at the bow. Neither the wild tribes of the 
woods nor the plains, neither the cultivated Greeks 
nor the Romans seem to have invented, or have in 
process of invention, anything which did or would 
give promise of radical change in the weapons of 
war. So certain were the ruling nations that this 
weapon would not be superseded that they ceased 
to look farther for anything new or novel, and they 
regarded further invention as unlikely or impossible. 
Nothing seemed likely to drive out the bow. In 
the Scottish wars the English army of cavalry and 
archers was matched against Scottish spearmen and 
easily won. At the time of Edward III of England, 
archers had become the mainstay of the army. They 
formed the complement thereof, either in front or 
rear ; in infantry or cavalry the bows supported the 
wings. Their range was remarkable. An Eng- 
lish archer is known to have discharged his weapon 
at a distance of six hundred yards with precision 
and effect, and three hundred yards was consid- 
ered no unusual achievement by many skilled arch- 
ers. In the time of Elizabeth taxes were paid in 
part by bows and arrows or the material to make 
them, and although gunpowder had been invented 
and siege guns were coming into use, half of the 



358 ROMANS SHOW SIGNS OF DECAY. 

cost of expensive armaments was charged to bows. 
Henry V had twenty-four thousand archers and 
Edward III ten thousand archers in his war against 
Philip of France, who nevertheless had five thou- 
sand cross-bowmen. Nor was the bow wholly giv- 
en up until within the space of one hundred years 
past. What sport the English hunter had with it 
is chronicled in the many valuable lives that paid 
the penalty of their folly. William Rufus, King 
of England, was killed in New Forest while hunt- 
ing in the year uoo by his companion, whose ar- 
row, discharged at a buck, glanced from a tree, 
and who, seeing the desperate plight he was in, 
hastened with all possible speed to the seashore 
and, finding a vessel, embarked for Palestine, went 
thither and flung his life away in battle with the 
Turk. John, the greatest of the Comnenian Princes 
of Constantinople, was killed by an arrow which 
fell from his quiver while hunting wild boar in the 
Valley of Arizarbus. Richard, an elder brother of 
William Rufus, was also killed in the New Forest, 
as was his nephew, Richard, and Richard Cceur 
de Leon, who had come home safe from the Cru- 
sades, was killed at Chalons with an arrow. The 
American Indian, with his prodigious strength and 
towering muscles, made the bow a terror to the 
white man. It is related of Powhattan that he 
drew a bow of such great length and with such 
masterly vigor that he sent the arrow clean through 
the body of a deer and fatally wounded his mate 
that stood beside him. 

The splendor, the renown and the decline of the 
Roman empire are among the conspicuous facts of 
history. So extensive and so complete did the 
former appear to be that when its boundaries were 
pushed out farther and farther by able generals 



ROMANS SHOW SIGNS OF DECAY. 359 

and not unwilling emperors it was beginning to 
suffer from internal decay. In Caesar's time the 
Emperor, as he was the head, was supposed to ac- 
company the army, but with the exception of Tra- 
jan and Aurelian, and still later Julian, after Octa- 
vian's death that custom was not generally prac- 
ticed. By that means the army in distant prov- 
inces was more effectually cut off from the direc- 
tion and support of the Senate, which in its early 
history was the ruling body. In time the arms 
which built up the Empire, in the hands of unpa- 
triotic and mercenary leaders, contributed to its 
overthrow. The Generals received and distributed 
the prizes of war and levied and frequently re- 
tained the necessary tribute where their armies were 
encamped. From the time that Caesar crossed the 
Rubicon the army, while not obedient to' law, en- 
forced what they were pleased to call their own 
laws. The government from being republican be- 
came despotic. Augustus or Octavian died in the 
year 14 A. D. and the feeble emperors that followed 
for forty years added no lasting glory and pre- 
served none which they had inherited. Succeed- 
ing them, however, Trajan, Hadrian and the two 
Antonines so supported and emphasized the teach- 
ings of Augustus that the name of Roman lost all 
its former obloquy, and by general consent this 
period became the happiest of Roman greatness. 
By the testimony of Augustus, he warmly advised 
his people not to seek to increase their limits by 
conquest of further territory, declaring that the 
limits of the Rhine, the Danube and the Ocean in 
the West, and the Euphrates in the East, were the 
extent of the dominions which they could hope to 
hold .safely, and advising them that in the admin- 
istration of those distant lands there was an open 



360 CONTEST ADVANCE OF SCYTHIANS. 

field for diplomacy which could accomplish more 
than arms. With two exceptions in the next two 
or three hundred years this advice was pretty close- 
ly followed. Julius Caesar, while he had overrun 
Britain, had not conquered it as he had conquered 
Gaul.- This was afterward effected under succeed- 
ing Emperors — by Agricola, under whose direction 
those great walls were built between the north and 
the south parts of the Island in that narrow space a 
little north of Edinburgh in Galway where the 
Firths unite to form an isthmus of about forty miles. 
Besides this the army made one expedition across 
the lower Danube by which Dacia was added to 
the Empire, the only Roman province beyond that 
great river. The banks of the Euphrates were care- 
fully guarded by Trajan and Aurelian, and "b-efov* 
the fall of the Western Empire by the Emperor 
Julian, who lost his life by a javelin in his attempt- 
ed retreat from the dominions of Persia. The Par- 
thians were the only enemies that contended suc- 
cessfully with the Roman arms in that distant re- 
gion until the Northern hordes came down from 
Scythia and under different names possessed them- 
selves of the great plain of Asia Minor, or drifted 
onward, a great propelling wave into Europe, 
through Thrace and Dalmatia in Northern Greece, 
now Roman land, beyond the Danube into the con- 
fines of Hungary. The Persian Sapors died, hav- 
ing spent most of their time in wars, either for the 
capture or recovery of Armenia, which lay be- 
tween them and the Roman lands, and whose peo- 
ple were always Romans and who were included 
in most treaties which the Persians made with the 
Romans. While Armenia remained under the pro- 
tection of the Empire it ably defended it against 
the constant inroads of the barbarians, who broke 



WEALTH DEVOTED TO LUXURY. 361 

through the defiles of the Caucasus on their march 
to the West. The Romans set up the Kings of Ar- 
menia, and so well and favorably known were the 
people of this province that Chosroes, the Persian, 
tied from his own nation to the Romans, who pro- 
tected his minority and gave him Roman culture. 
When in a stress of misfortune at the farther East 
the Roman general withdrew his protection for 
awhile, the barbarians broke through the narrow 
passes of the Caspian and were so troublesome to 
them and the Persians that the two empires mutu- 
ally built and guarded a long line of fortifications, 
which ran from Colchis, at the mouth of the Phasis, 
on the Euxine, to the plains above. Treaties with the 
Persians were always made to be broken accord- 
ing to the necessities or abilities of the combatants, 
and this intercepting line was violated by the Per- 
sians one hundred and fifty years after the Western 
Empire was overthrown, but in this ferment, which 
preceded the fall, articles of luxury flowed in copi- 
ous streams by way of caravan, which ran through 
to the open ports. The Romans in enjoying their 
wealth forgot or neglected the avenues through 
which their progenitors had made it. As dissipa- 
tion increased the flood gates of expenditures re- 
mained open. The merchant galleys were busy in 
transporting articles of jewelry and' feminine adorn- 
ments and the evanescent odors of India or the Isle 
of Cathay. The spices of Ceylon and Malibar ; the 
pearls and carbuncles of India and the silks which 
the looms of Nankin manufactured, became most 
conspicuous as merchandise or dearest article of 
female attire then known. 

Every six months, ships starting out from the 
Red Sea and running along the mainland to the 
Persian Gulf at length reached Cevlon, where Chi- 



362 CHINA. 

nese merchants met them and sold their wares. 
When the Persian wars did not interfere the cara- 
vans met the ships returning home and took its 
usual route up the Tigris or the Euphrates by the 
ruins of Babylon on to the north of Palmyra, where 
it joined the mountains and skirting around it went 
westward in the Syrian Desert on to Damascus and 
the Mediterranean shores of Phcenecia and ulti- 
mately to the three great distributing centers of 
Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome. The Per- 
sians also competed for the trade and when the 
route was blocked through the desert, they took 
north of the Caspian and then around to the Black 
Sea or the Euxine, reaching Constantinople that 
way. There was also a farther Eastern route, 
which the Persians could use and that was by way 
of Kansuh, the northwestern corner of China, a di- 
rect route from Pekin, south of the Great Wall, 
where there was always an open port. The great 
difficulty was in crossing the mountains and the 
possibility of meeting hostile tribes. There was no 
tribute in passing through the Hellespont and the 
route to Alexandria was sometimes changed to cross 
the Isthmus, when there was a canal. When the 
fleets landed farther south in a port of Arabia, the 
goods were transported to Yemen, on the Eastern 
side of the Sand Desert and when the traffic from 
Abyssinia was unimpeded, it followed across the 
country to the Nile, whence it descended the River 
to the City. Whatever way it came, when once the 
gates were open they were not easily closed and it 
is fortunate we believe that other classes of mer- 
chandise than articles of luxury found passage into 
Syria. Chinese pyrotechnics may have been an 
article of luxury and flowed in like any foreign 
commerce finding a channel already prepared. Who 



THE WONDERFUL CHINESE. 363 

transported or delivered the goods we do not know. 
But if the Chinese prepared them they were cer- 
tainly able to transport them, and when once de- 
livered they fell into hands, either ignorant of their 
use or zealously determined not to barter them 
away on an open market. We will see how far 
the East was indebted to the Chinese for Greek 
Fire. 

Beyond the Eastern boundaries of the Roman 
Empire and thence forth reaching to the Yellow 
Sea and the Ocean was the great Chinese Empire. 
Its history, strange though it be, antedates all hu- 
man record. It became a hermit nation solely for 
its own defense, always persistently devoted to in- 
dustries, which require patient thought and minute 
investigation, they have from time immemorial 
prosecuted scientific inquiries. Long before the 
Babylonians read the stars, they had made charts 
of the heavens. They discovered the art of print- 
ing on movable blocks or types long before the 
Europeans. They discovered silk worms and the 
mode of propagating them and had woven their 
tiny webs into the most costly articles which found 
a market in the marts of their enterprising neigh- 
bors. When this commerce was interrupted by the 
transplanting of the eggs into Persia by two monks 
who carried them away in a wooden tube or pencil, 
they applied themselves with renewed zeal in the 
manufacture of silk garments or vests, which be- 
came objects of barter and exchange, and which 
were frequently mentioned as the spoils of sub- 
ject nations in their foreign wars. With such, 
habits of acquiring and unburdened with the vice 
of spending they became, like the Jews, kings of 
finance within their commercial limits, and while 
the Greeks were exploring the estuaries of the 



364 GREEK FIRE FROM CHINA. 

Euxine, founding new cities and planting colonies 
here and there, and the Phoenicians were trading in 
the products of the mines and fields and in traffic 
along the Mediterranean, and opening up great 
routes of travel, they modestly secured the prizes 
of manufacture in constructing inexpensive and 
easily preserved articles of traffic and disposing of 
them through first hands and in exchange for coin. 
They rarely passed beyond the limits of their own 
country except in occasional wars, disposing largely 
of their goods in their capital city and the outskirts 
of the provinces which had a trade with western 
nations. They were skilful engineers and physi- 
cians and worked with considerable skill mines of 
gold and silver. "Their skill as craftsmen," says 
a Franciscan friar, "in every art requiring minute 
research, was equaled by few and excelled by 
none." Their heaviest burden was the inroads 
which their neighboring nations made upon them 
from the north and west, and in the long run they 
suffered more from foreign invasion than they were 
able to repay. 

From the few scattering notices obtainable, it 
appears that the Greek Fire originated in China 
and found its outlet through the then known chan- 
nels of trade, the caravans. Though historians 
differ and the ablest of them all cautions his readers 
to suspect his ignorance from the slight evidence 
obtainable, both of the country of its origin and its 
early composition, the doubt is the weakest which 
couples its appearance in Asia Minor the early part 
of the Third Century. From that time forward sev- 
eral instances are on record of an artificial fire which 
was employed by besiegers or besieged in the in- 
vestment of a city. Sometimes it is hard to dis- 
tinguish between the mechanical engines and the 



INSTANCES OF USE OF THE FIRE. 365 

material because every besieging army carried 
trains of these engines and battering rams, and 
they threw red hot balls of stone or iron which 
were easily mistaken for foreign fire. Somebody 
delivered the goods into Syria as they there first 
appeared, and before the final rupture of Rome 
with internal hemorrhage. Later we shall see bv 
whom the discovery was claimed, but the following- 
instances show its origin long before the siege of 
Constantinople. In the year 270 A. D. Zenobia 
and Odaenathus disputed the sovereignty of Rome 
over Palmyra, a city of the Syrian desert and on 
one of the trade routes between the East and the 
West. Aurelian was Emperor and he proceeded 
against her, and after reducing her to submission 
he departed home. When nearing the straits which 
connect Europe and Asia he was overtaken by a 
courier who informed him that she had again re- 
belled, and, returning at once, he overthrew her 
army, destroyed the city and took her in chains to 
Rome to grace his triumph. "The Roman people," 
says he, "speak with contempt of a war I am wag- 
ing with a woman. It is impossible to enumerate 
her warlike preparations of stones and arrows and 
every species of missile weapons. From every part 
of the walls artificial fires are thrown from her 
military engines." We cannot say what that arti- ' 
ficial fire was, but at least it was suggestive of be- 
ing, and it clearly was, the nucleus of that great 
discovery which five centuries later arrested the 
march of the victorious Prophet of Arabia. In 
546, after the fall, Rome was attacked by an army 
of Goths led by Totila and captured in spite of the 
defense of a floating castle which contained a maga- 
zine of fire, sulphur and bitumen. As these were 
the main ingredients of Greek Fire, it seems hardly 



366 CLEOPATRA COQUETS WITH ROMANS. 

safe to claim that the discovery came to the knowl- 
edge of the Romans nearly two hundred years later. 
Possibly it might have remained a secret posses- 
sion of the government had that remained in Italy, 
but its glory had fallen and the Empire had been 
transported to the City of the Straits. Coming still 
nearer the siege of Constantinople we may remem- 
ber that Heraclius invaded Persia for the purpose 
of calling off the army with which Chosroes had 
laid siege to the city. Heraclius suddenly attacked 
in the winter season the walls of Salban in Media 
and razed them to the ground with the aid of darts 
and torches. These torches were not merely com- 
bustibles of flax wound round the point of a dart, 
but their destructive nature arose from the compo- 
sition in which they were dipped and which once 
set on fire could not be put out, and the historian 
distinctly says "the city was saved by fire and 
mechanics." The fire was doubtless some form of 
Greek or Chinese combustible which later saved 
Constantinople, but had no great potency as an at- 
tacking weapon till it was later improved and be- 
came an explosive. 

It is generally believed, and often stated, that this 
trade between the West and the East by caravan 
was not large during the decline of the Empire. 
Nevertheless it continued of very fair proportion, 
in connection with Alexandria, which derived al- 
most its entire profits from foreign commerce. 
Ptolemy Philadelphus reopened the canal of the Red 
Sea, established a desert route for the caravans, sent 
ambassadors to India, and enlarged the trade with it 
and Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, which continued for 
eighteen centuries beginning with 266 B. C. The 
Romans were very careful not to obstruct any com- 
merce, the fruits oi which they enjoyed or which 



LUXURIES RUIN OF THE ROMANS. 36? 

ultimately would be of interest to them. The state 
of Egypt at the time of Cleopatra illustrates the 
fact that Rome was steeped in the luxuries which 
she was fain to enjoy and only foreign countries 
could furnish. At the time of the death of her 
father, Ptolemy Auletes, she became ruler under 
the Romans in connection with a younger brother 
whom the laws compelled her to marry. He was 
but a youth and she pined to be free from her boy 
husband, and with the entire authority of the gov- 
ernment to espouse Antony, who as one of the 
Roman Triumvirs, was looking after his interests 
in Asia Minor. Octavian had instructed Antony 
to call Cleopatra to trial for usurping the throne 
and putting her brother to death. The queen did 
not wait for Antony's tribunal, but set of! with a 
costly galley with sails of silk and purple, and re- 
clining on an improvised throne scented with the 
odors of Ceylon, with strains of music and the art- 
ful coquetry of lights and shadows which betrayed 
her royal dress and luxuriant form, over which 
the eunuchs bended in silent admiration, she sailed 
up the Cydnus in Cilicia and bore Antony off to 
Egypt, a slave and not a judge, leaving his king- 
dom to the peril of being lost to the Roman arms. 
There with the use of all the arts of a profligate 
woman she detained him for several years, until 
Octavian, becoming weary of having his authority 
thrown into disrespect, made war upon him, and 
in the battle of Actium in the Adriatic, where 
Cleopatra furnished part of the ships, Caesar over- 
threw him. Cleopatra, hasting away to Egypt, 
killed herself on report of Antony's death, which 
Antony seconded by doing likewise. She gave as 
her only testament to the Roman people three chil- 
dren to Antony as she had before given to Caesar a 



368 DEAD TRUNK MAKES LITTLE SHADE. 

son. With her expired the last of the Ptolemies, 
the sixth in order and the most profligate of them 
all. 

If we will examine carefully what kinds of mer- 
chandise the traffic was made up of which came 
into the ports of Rome and Alexandria we should 
be able to compute how much virtue was left to 
the, Romans before the Fall. These articles were 
silks, jewels, perfumes, pearls, precious unguents, 
slaves and slave girls, with salt and sulphur and in 
the Syrian desert at Palmyra where the caravans 
were not long in their route from East to West, was 
to be seen bales of purple wool, Grecian bronzes as 
ornaments for the temples, and incense, the olive 
oil of Palestine, with hides from Arabia, which 
lined along the public buildings on the backs of 
asses or camels made a show of Eastern pomp and 
elegance which strangely contrasted with the mov- 
ings sands of the desert. Pliny computes the 
value of the wares which became articles of lux- 
ury as introduced into Rome as not less than 
three quarters of a million yearly. Silk was the 
most expensive of all the articles of dress. It was 
estimated that it was then in the second or third 
century worth a hundred dollars a pound in the 
Capitol. Pearls and diamonds stood highest among 
precious stones, and aromatics were used exten- 
sively in their pagan worship for the temples. The 
Senate at this time complained that in the purchase 
of female ornaments the wealth of the State flowed 
to foregn nations. The annual loss from this source 
is computed at eight hundred thousand pounds ster- 
ling. When we consider the amount that con- 
stantly flowed in from the Provinces as tribute, the 
rich mines of Spain and the revenues from con- 
quered cities, it does not seem at all disproportion- 



THE WAGES Of SIN IS DEATH. 369 

ate as long as the rulers were possessed of the prin- 
ciples of public virtue, but it is commonly remarked 
that those suddenly raised to affluence are the least 
worthy to receive it, while those born to fortune, 
if they pass the early years with safety, can endure 
the homage of luxury without unworthy ostenta- 
tion. The heritage of ancestors in jewels and un- 
serviceable bric-a-brac and heirlooms seldom reach 
the open market, when once they have been valued 
as keep-sakes. Luxury twines like a parasite round 
a healthy tree ; it is modest, living in seclusion un- 
der the protecting leaves of the giant oak, which 
supports it from publicity, but the ruder sort is 
ambitious, it is vulgar and clambers up with ap- 
parent grace a trunk dead at its top ; without a 
crown ; without a leaf and living on the dead past 
bestows a wealth of leaves and shade, which covers 
its naked defects till it falls. 

The latter kind seems to represent the wealthy 
Romans as they were in the latter days of the Em- 
pire. As the woman with many lovers is false to 
them all, so the worship of many gods and god- 
desses, however refined, is fatal to any belief. The 
woods and groves and later the temples corrupted 
the morals without informing the faculties. The 
virtues that have no active enforcement by mental 
training sink to a common level and that is low 
and debasing. The commune of France is impos- 
sible anywhere, because the man of ten talents is 
not satisfied with the pay of five. Frederick the 
Great found it an ungrateful task to raise an army 
of six-footers, because the culling out process must 
take off the heads of the tallest or stretch the necks 
of the shortest. There are but two places in the 
world where a level is always forming, the ocean 
and the desert, and these two have never found a 



370 GREEK FIRE. 

habitation for man. The wages of sin is death ; 
the wages of poverty is silence. No living thing 
flies or flees or swims in the waters of the Dead 
Sea and impure things and bacilli swarm in foul 
and stagnant waters. In the Roman world love had 
become lust. No woman of beauty, of chastity, who 
valued herself, dared to show herself uncovered in 
the presence of the Emperors. The debaucheries of 
the Court before the fall were of the same disgrace- 
ful character as those of Theodora, wife of Justinian, 
after. Seductions were rampant, lewdness grew to 
be constitutional. 

The fetters of unseemly passions held the people 
till long after mid-summer prime had passed away, 
when Nature is sombre, its appeals luke-warm and 
its responses indifferent. The wife of an emperor 
mourned like Alexander, because the parsimony of 
Nature abridged her gallantries. The voluptuous- 
ness and sensuous models of Egypt were trans- 
planted into Italy after Cleopatra had passed one 
winter season with the Caesar at Rome. The 
Eunuchs presented new inducements to gratify the 
tastes of their masters, because they were in con- 
dition to be trusted themselves without betraying 
others. 

The Greek fire as a combustible came into the 
notice of the Eastern world, as we believe, while 
this depravity was centralizing about Rome. Some- 
body in the Provinces gave it or sold it to 1 Zenobia, 
who was wise enough to know its worth and to 
keep it as profoundly secret as did the Greeks, 
when once they knew what is was. 

The description of this combustible as it appeared 
at the Seige of Constantinople has been well de- 
scribed by a French critic, who writes — "It was 
like a winged long tail dragon, about the thickness 



GREEK FIRE AFTER ZENOBIA. 371 

of a hogshead, with a report of thunder and the 
velocity of lightning, which dispelled the darkness 
by its illumination. It was discharged upon the 
enemy by various engines of war, or in smaller 
quantities attached to arrows or darts " Aside from 
its terrible appearance it concerns us most to know 
what was the propelling force, whether of outside 
agency alone or in part, and whether it was wholly 
a combustible. We are inclined to view it only as 
the latter, at least in its earliest stages and during 
this siege, and while it is conceded that it was com- 
posed of a mixture of Median oil or petroleum and 
sulphur, and the pitch from evergreen firs was 
added to conceal more thoroughly its ingredients, 
saltpeter was afterwards added, when it became an 
explosive. It is known that rockets were employed 
at a very early period in India and later by Leo at 
the time of the siege. The composition may have 
been enclosed in hollow globes of iron and dis- 
charged like a hand grenade from the walls, in 
which case it would not have been of the immense 
size that was sometimes noted. There is one in- 
stance, and only one, wherein the retraction of 
twisted cords is given as the motive power. Now 
the fact that this substance was often vomited forth 
from the mouths of copper tubes fastened on the 
prows of ships, confirms the belief that the propul- 
sive force was the same as that used by the 
machine guns against a besieged city. This was 
hand power of some sort, aided by mechanical con- 
trivance, and made so strong as to readily shake 
and batter the walls. Joinville, who was an eye 
witness of the siege, says it was thrown from a 
petrary, which was a device for hurling stones and 
rocks. It is not to be supposed in the first instance 
of its use that it would show the same or ecmal 



372 MATERIALS WELL KNOWN. 

effects that were obtained afterward, but its chance 
of improvement was slow so long as it was known 
to be confined to one city without the aid of in- 
ventors from without to add or exhibit its terrible 
effects. 

But the materials of manufacture were common 
in many Eastern cities. Petroleum was a product 
which under one name or another was known to all 
the inhabitants of the Mediterranean, as well as the 
Euphrates. It was carried on the backs of camels 
from city to city. It was known to the Scythian 
country, to Arabia, as well as to China and India. 
The terror Greek fire inspired in its composition was 
out of all proportion to its effect, but it produced fear 
and fear is destructive of the morals of any army. 
It could be put out only with sand, earth or vinegar. 
Water merely quickened and increased its danger. 
When thrown over the walls of a city, it immedi- 
ately attached itself to some loose object, when the 
people fled and the city fell. No time was necessary 
to make it a blazing caldron. The patient and 
minute industry of the Chinese in the combination 
of the two materials, petroleum and sulphur, was 
added to by distant nations who became possessed 
of the knowledge of its wonderful effects as an 
agent in their wars. By the means of the charred 
embers of wood fire, acting on the nitre already in 
the soil, a further compound would be formed, using 
the same materials as afterward entered into gun- 
powder. Tourists and travelers for sport might at 
any time kindle a fire while camping over night by 
which the materials would be brought together and 
an explosion would be the result. Such result ac- 
tually followed, it is believed not from the Chinese, 
who were proficient in the ruder forms of artificial 
fire, but who for a thousand years always asserted 



GREEK FIRE BECOMES AN EXPLOSIVE. 373 

that they knew nothing of its application as gun- 
powder to the arts of war, and indeed the knowledge 
slumbered everywhere till about the fourteenth 
century. The Chinese claimed the accidental dis- 
covery of fire by the fricton of two pieces of dry 
wood. In 284 A. D. Theodosius, the Roman Em- 
peror, sent ambassadors to China, and the Persians 
for a long time, as well as the Romans, in the third 
century, were so well acquainted with the China 
trade and with war between them, the traffic was 
constantly flowing into other countries from Kan- 
suh in the Northwest. After the trade was re- 
stricted by constant wars of the Persians, it was ex- 
tended more fully along the sandy deserts of Ara- 
bia, and later by water transportation when the 
Arabs began to plunder caravans which got through 
by Mecca and Medina. The most we can say then 
is that the Chinese originated or employed the ma- 
terials which formed the combustible while other 
nations outside added saltpeter, when the explosive 
nature came into notice. This becomes more prob- 
able from the fact that while the original of the 
Chinese ingredients placed together, when once ex- 
posed to the air takes fire, the addition of salt- 
peter makes an explosive. Then to get its full ef- 
fect, it became necessary to control and centralize 
the ingredients in such a way that the combustion 
must take effect in time and place as suited the 
operator, or else the operator must be destroyed by 
his own petard. 

Whether this hollow tube was suggested by Pan 
playing on his pipe or flute, or the known fashion 
of some tribes that with the use of a reed as a blow 
gun, was discharged poisonous weapons, or from 
the knowledge of circulatory and digestive processes, 
or the warlike method of discharging missiles by 



374 IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 

means of tubes over the walls of a besieged city, 
does not appear certain, but it was not done to any 
extent before the fourteenth century, as the closed 
tube did not appear till that time in its use for the 
purposes of artillery. Up to that time, some six 
centuries elapsed with no important improvement in 
the use or efficiency of military arms, only two addi- 
tional implements of war had been added by the 
Romans from the beginning of their history, one of 
which was the iron mace or battle ax in the West 
and the lance in the East. War would naturally 
create weapons of war, and this it did in number by 
a greatly increased ratio everywhere the Roman gov- 
ernment held its armies. The forges of the great 
cities of Gaul and Syria were working night and 
day in bringing out increased numbers of weapons 
of the size or character the smiths could handle. It 
is said there were twenty-seven factories in these 
two provinces alone after Clovis had begun his 
work of cutting to pieces, forming anew and con- 
solidating the remnants of three nations of barbar- 
ians in Gaul. In Constantinople from the time of 
its foundation, immense preparations were con- 
stantly in vogue for supplying swords and spears 
and bucklers for the army in constant struggle in 
the East with Persia or in defending the City from 
the attacks of mercenary tribes, which at any mo- 
ment and without warning congregated in battle 
array around the walls. Every battle left a con- 
fused mass of broken armor, too good not to be 
stolen and too poor to repair. The vices of savages 
are always built upon the weakness of their adver- 
sary, real or supposed, and whenever a legion 
showed signs of giving way as the Romans often 
did, when they reached the outer circle of their 
conquests, east or west on the Euphrates or the 



GREEK FIRE HELPS ROMANS. 375 

Rhine, the slaughter of men and weapons was 
something teriffic. When Crassus was defeated 
by the Parthians about the first century, the shame 
at- the loss of their standards so played upon the 
mind of Augustus, that he made an unusual effort 
to regain them by going there himself, a thing which 
he seldom did and recovered them at a great sacri- 
fice. 

So far as the Barbarians are concerned, who made 
war upon the Roman dominions, we have seen that 
up to the time of the decline and fall, they had 
brought to light no new or important discovery, 
which would lighten the horror or shorten the con- 
flict of arms. The Roman world seemed apathetic, 
while it was slowly sinking, where courage could no 
longer compel victory. The Romans were not in- 
ventors, but simply conquerors, and when the Rom- 
an youth by the softness of their manners cor- 
rupted by wealth and with weak and flaccid muscles 
refused to handle the weapons, with which their 
ancestors achieved the great conquests from Britain 
to the Euphrates, and left the long line of outposts 
which ran from the Rhine to the Danube and the 
Euxine open to the Barbarians, and only slaves and 
captives to guard the road to the Capital, there was 
no longer any force which could break the fall or 
hold the. Empire together. If some Callinichus had 
then come to their rescue, with the discovery, which 
it is claimed he delivered to the Greeks two cen- 
turies later at Constantinople, the Roman might 
have rolled back the tide which set in from the 
north and east, driven the Barbarians to the moun- 
tains and maintained the supremacy, which it had 
gained, not only in war, but in all the arts which 
adorn and beautify the life of a nation. Gibbon has 
said that no new arm had appeared from the time 



376 BOW REMAINS WITH SCYTHIANS. 

of Thttcydides, five hundred years before the Chris- 
tion year ; it might be said with truth none had ap- 
peared till Constantinople was invested by the Turks 
in the Seventh Century. Practically the number and 
nature of the arms they used were few and limited. 
In Alexander's time the pike and sword and battle- 
axe and bow, not counting slings, were the sole out- 
fit. The pike was very long, of sixteen feet, which 
was after his conquest found to be so cumbrous and 
unmanageable, it was reduced to twelve feet. The 
eastern nations, into whose provinces Alexander 
transported his army, were all bowmen. As a gen- 
eral rule the Eastern nations in contra distinction 
from the West, have always considered the bow as 
their most effective weapon. All the nations that 
dwelt in Scythia north and east of the Black Sea 
to the confines of Finland and Siberia, now under 
one name and now under another, stretching over 
those vast plains which Russia holds for thousands 
of miles to the Arctic ocean, always made special 
and effective use of the bow. As these countries 
embraced the tribes which made inroads into the 
Roman provinces, always going south, seeking 
warmer and more fertile climes for their families 
and flocks, while the cultivated peoples, that lived 
in or near the promontories that jut out into the 
Mediterranean never carried their commerce be- 
yond the table land of Russia or steppes of Tartary, 
we may believe the bow originated in that quarter 
contiguous to the Caspian. At all events the Tar- 
tar bow was always meant and dreaded by the 
Romans when they compared their own arms with 
those of the peoples beyond the Caucausus, the 
Caspian, the mountains of Armenia, the Oxus and 
the Jaxartes. In ages long past before history can 
make determinate limits, the bow was the main 



ZENOBIA QUEEN OF PALMYRA. 377 

weapon employed in attack or defense in Assyria 
and Babylon, where originated the progenitors of 
mankind. But it was of little use in the hands of 
feeble or effeminate peoples like the Romans, snch 
as they became in their decay. Under different 
names the same weapon is often meant as in the 
case of the pike, which becomes a spear or lance. 
The sword in Scottish annals becomes a falchion, 
with the Turks a cimeter and the form and shape 
assume different styles to suit the fancy or caprice 
of the nation that adopts it. The fact that the pur- 
pose or the effect of the weapon was unchanged is 
indubitable proof that the Romans had lost the en- 
terprise and elasticity of their ancestors without 
genius to discover their weakness or thrift to repair 
their mistakes before the inevitable fall, which 
sooner or later must come or some fortunate Syrian 
unknown to fame reaps the benefit of an inestimable 
discovery. 

From what we have been able to gain of scat- 
tered notices from different writers, we should place 
the discovery of Greek or Chinese fire as it was 
then understood from the middle to the end of the 
third century. This is not entirely agreeable to 
some writers, but when we consider the proofs 
which lead to this belief and the fact that the dis- 
agreement may arise more from the looseness and 
ambiguity of words which are the weapons and not 
the argument itself, we may find our conclusions 
are reconcilable. We have already given several 
instances where a mixture of petroleum and sulphur 
was used. Once against the Goths in Italy, once in 
Persia, at the walls of Salban, and one more im- 
portant and specific instance, at the Siege of Palmy- 
ra, wherein Aurelian was the Roman general and 
emperor and Zenobia was the Queen of that city. 



S78 GOTHS QUICK TO LEARN OF ROMANS. 

She was eventually subdued and taken to Rome to 
grace the triumph of her captor. It is now upwards 
of fifty years since we first read the story of the Pal- 
myrean Queen and our conception of her character 
has not been very much dimmed or altered in that 
long - interval. To us it is a most melancholy story 
from the time Aurelian engaged her armies in An- 
tioch and Emesa, till he had broken her power, 
trampled upon her successful and brilliant admin- 
istration and, fastened with a golden chain to his 
chariot, offered her to the dust and contempt of 
Rome. But it is not in sympathy with her fallen 
power alone that we make issue, for she was honor- 
ably saved from death, given a villa at Tivoli, 
twenty miles from the city, and for many genera- 
tions her name with all the honors acquired was 
perpetuated unbroken to a long line of posterity. 

Where were all the great generals who plodded 
along the highways from Tyre and Antioch and 
Babylon and the Persian Gulf, with their immense 
armies to be destroyed sooner or later by Sapor 
and the Chosroes, that this little secret was over- 
looked and the bold, sprightly, energetic and withal 
beautiful woman was able to secure and control 
and flaunt it in the face of the Roman legions? 
The secret she knew how to acquire and maintain 
would have been of more worth to the Roman 
world than all the armies that passed the straits of 
Europe and Asia. How she acquired this knowl- 
edge we are unable to determine but as the Empire 
extended over all the lands with which she was ac- 
quainted, from Rome to the Imperial city of Ctesi- 
phon, the capital of Persia, we think she skillfully 
and purposely held the knowledge to herself and 
later imparted it to the Emperors as they treated her 
with becoming civility in her villa. Let it be re- 



GOTHS QUICK TO LEARN OF ROMANS. 379 

membered she was no settled enemy of Rome, she 
had repeatedly overthrown Persian armies, which 
Roman generals and soldiers were only too glad she 
should do, and had even helped them in reducing 
and holding Egypt in submission and with the 
knowledge so acquired and bequeathed to the Rom- 
ans she was able effectually to prevent Totila, the 
Goth, from entering the city. Was it not significant 
that in the three centuries which elapsed between her 
fall and the attack of the Goth no living person, high 
or low, held the key which could shut out a for- 
eign army from Rome. We do not believe that the 
full success of the invention at that time had been 
reached. We see no evidence of an explosive com- 
pound which was afterwards developed and reached 
the market among the Greeks, but the force of two' 
ingredients was sufficient to save and maintain the 
fortunes of the city. The fire was there and it could 
be distributed at any of the frequent sieges artifici- 
ally with the same force that carried red-hot balls 
of stone and iron from the military engines, that 
accompanied every Roman army, but the Goths had 
no knowledge of its existence. They were a race 
of hardy, compact and substantial bodies and al- 
though they never developed any of the arts them- 
selves they were ambitious to learn, quick to imitate, 
and of such versatility in mechanical contrivances, 
they were soon possessed of all the devices of the 
Romans. They entered the armies of Rome for 
the one purpose of becoming their equals, and the 
vices of the growing youth among their rulers con- 
tributed so far to their success that they soon knew 
at some future time, not far distant, new blood 
must be infused or failure was inevitable and in 
their place the Goths would become the sovereigns 
of Italv. 



380 COMMERCE BETWEEN SYRIA AND CHINA. 

It may as- well be remembered also that after the 
fall of the Western Empire the theory and practice 
of the arts through mechanical power were culti- 
vated extensively by the emperors at Constantinople 
and they were only too quick to put into execution 
any expedient which would tend to vanquish their 
enemies. It was common report that Syracuse had 
been saved by the burning glasses of Archimedes 
and Proclus was said to have destroyed a Gothic 
fleet in the harbors of Constantinople with sulphur, 
which it is needless to say was not unaccompanied 
by some foreign substance, presumably bitumen, as 
a single substance could have had no positive effect. 
It is recalled that Septimius Severus, in 201 A. D„ 
while attacking Atra in his eastern expedition, had 
his siege trains burned up with naphtha, and it is 
easier to explain the appearance of naptha than that 
of sulphur as the whole of the provinces of Persia 
are supplied abundantly with that material, while 
sulphur has to be imported. 

We shall be compelled to go back to China as a 
first inventor of original Greek fire, because of the 
nature of the materials and the character of the 
Chinese justifies that conclusion, they being chem- 
ists of greater or lesser originality and accustomed 
to close and protracted inquiries while the Romans 
were more mechanical in their nature and could 
carry out in a better manner what the hermit nation 
could suggest. 

As to the commerce between Syria and China 
there is no doubt that it was as constant and ex- 
tensive in the reign of Zenobia as it was in the time 
of Justinian or Chosroes, two or three centuries 
later. During this time the manufacture of silk was 
largely carried on and silk and silk cocoons was a 
great staple of commerce between the two countries, 



Fall of rome and the goths. 38i 

which foreign merchants purchased in Pekin and 
manufactured articles of silk were held in great 
esteem by the Persians and silk vests comprised 
largely the tributes, which they demanded of the 
Romans, whenever they were successful in wars 
with them. This traffic was largely carried on by 
the Mohometans in their holy wars and by the Per- 
sians before the rise of the Saracens. During this 
time, while Rome was weakened and luxury was 
rampant, while the Roman nobles were living in 
affluence, bringing their corn from Africa and their 
prosperity in various channels was marked either as 
tribute or as wealth which was confiscated from the 
nations which they over-threw and while they ex- 
pected nothing and gained nothing, but what was 
brought from the provinces by the same channel, 
by some inscrutable decree they received the 
blessing of the Chinese discovery, which neither 
party was able to weigh at its full value till it had 
revolutionized modern war-fare. The constant wars, 
which left neither life nor property with the grow- 
ing luxury was fast threatening the extinction of 
the human species. It is computed that not over 
one-third or one-fifth of the inhabitants of Italy and 
Syria remained, when Rome gave up the struggle 
for foreign conquest, turned over her authority to 
the eastern Empire, which after the fall of the City 
of Rome held only the coast line of the Adriatic 
under an Exarch of Ravenna and southward run- 
ning to Campania and Calabria and later to Sicily 
at the overthrow of the Vandals. The City of Rome 
fell to the Popes as the rulers of Italy who claimed 
both temporal and spiritual power, but sometimes 
they ran away when a foreign army approached and 
they could not maintain themselves without help. 
When the Lombards under Alboin had settled in 



382 FALL OF ROME AND THE GOTHS. 

the northern part of Italy and were carrying their 
arms southward, they seemed determined to over- 
throw most of Italy and were it not for Pepin of 
Gaul, who crossed the Alps to their relief, the City 
of Rome would have fallen. The Goths under 
Theodoric held the city for sixty years till Narses 
and Belisarius, fresh from the conquests of Africa, 
terminated their reign in Italy and the provinces 
got back the management of their own domestic 
affairs while the Imperial City held to its former 
prestige as the center of the great, religious hier- 
archy, which set up and dethroned at its dictation 
the kings and princes, who 1 ruled beyond the Alps 
and calling to their aid armies in defense of their 
presumed rights when their authority was disputed 
or the City attacked. Their authority was so great 
and the name and fame of the city had grown so 
long under the rule of able emperors that until the 
year eight-hundred, when the reign of Charlemagne 
commenced, that the great generals came there to 
enjoy their triumphs and the emperors to be 
crowned and travelers from every province con- 
tinued to come and view the magnificent city which 
for twelve hundred years had become the museum 
of Empires effaced, the musical, literary and critical 
emporium of wealth and fashion and art, the palaces 
which beauty had honored and of which poets and 
orators had sung the praises which civic pride had 
builded and martial valor had defended and a be- 
seeching cry to Heaven had finally saved from the 
torch of the Barbarians. Rome was abandoned for 
the City of the Straits, the great Constantinople as 
yet young and uncrowned. 

In trying to discover the origin of Greek fire and 
its introduction into Syria not only does it appear 
there was a clear route opened up from China or 



ROMANS NOT GREAT AT INVENTION. 383 

India by means of caravans, however infrequent, and 
however often their route was changed to suit the 
exigencies of war or conquest, it may have appeared 
that the trade was not only possible, but very prob- 
able in the importation of Greek fire. Now by the 
system of exclusion it might further appear that 
this combustible could not be produced by any other 
people. The Roman people had assimilated the 
Barbarians and in many cases subject peoples and 
races of neighboring countries had associated with 
them till they became homogeneous. Inasmuch as 
they ruled over the entire country from the 
Euphrates to the Atlantic, and from Egypt to the 
Baltic at the time in which this discovery in whole 
or in part was possessed by some Syrian, the proba- 
bilities are that if a secret it was most likely the 
Roman people would have been the first to have 
purchased or possessed it, their generals were the 
shrewdest and most progressive individuals (the 
nation could furnish, they would have caught at 
the opportunity to secure any device that would give 
success to their arms and undying luster to their 
own name. In the event of a new discovery of 
great importance they would have been recalled to 
Rome immediately and if not granted a triumph, 
they would have been hailed as the deliverers or the 
restorers of the Empire, would have been granted 
the freedom of the city, a heavy increase in pay and 
would have been entitled to the rank of Caesar. 
So much for the character of the Romans as pur- 
chasers, but were they producers ? Beyond the lim- 
ited scope of mechanics and exploits in the field and 
in arms their genius did not seem to run in other 
or abundant channels. They may have invented 
the compass. They produced few inventions that 
required deep thought or profound study. The 



384 ROMANS IMPROVE ARMS. 

Roman nation was conspicuous from Caesar's time 
for the study of ways and means to colonize dis- 
tant countries ; to increase modes of travel and to 
use all the devices of labor which did not depend 
entirely upon mental training. In their constant 
wars they invented military engines, wooden tur- 
rets, which they either transported across the coun- 
try or built on the spot as the necessary and special 
accompaniments of sieges, they sent these moving 
vans in large numbers, when they expected to at- 
tack a walled city, ten being the usual number with 
a large army. Their catapults and ballistae were 
of such enormous strength and efficiency, that very 
few walls could resist them. They could throw 
stone and iron balls of hundreds of pounds weight, 
(whatever the power may have been) over the 
walls into the city and set it on fire. As time passed 
on and armies in the field engaged less in battle 
and more in walled towns, they laid aside the pilum, 
which had been so serviceable in hand to hand con- 
tests, and built instead towers leading to the top of 
the walls with such destructive effect. They threw 
darts wrapped with tow and fed with oil from them, 
and they built battering rams headed with iron with 
such velocity as twenty or fifty men could produce, 
that scarcely a wall was left without yielding. They 
established posts for conveying news from city to 
city and from their remotest possessions to the Capi- 
tal and their expedition for that age was somewhat 
remarkable. They could make a distance of one 
hundred miles in twelve hours by having relays of 
horses every fifty or sixty miles. The event of a 
battle gave the officer in charge of important news 
no excuse of any kind for delay, no expense was to 
be thought of, and neglect was the worth of his life. 
They organized their armies on a different basis in 



ROMANS BUILD SHIPS OF WAR. 385 

later years than when they first encountered the 
Persians. They met bowmen with bowmen, and 
cavalry with cavalry, put their bowmen in the front 
or rear, and the light troops in the center. By this 
means they could easily and rapidly throw out 
wings like a crescent, and when the attack was most 
spirited and the center engaged, draw the horns to- 
gether, encompass a great mass of combatants and 
send them to the rear as prisoners. They ex- 
changed the pilum for the lance as the shields, when 
covered with plates or steel, were impenetrable or 
at least would not hold the weapon. They reduced 
their legions from ten thousand men, including 
auxiliaries, and cavalry to five thousand men with 
additional cavalry and in the Persian wars seven 
legions numbered only twenty thousand outside of 
cavalry. They kept two legions in Britain to de- 
fend the walls, which Hadrian and the Antonines 
had built to keep out the Caledonians, and some- 
thing in excess of thirty legions in the remaining 
provinces. 

These walls were a terror to the Picts and Scots 
who were moving southward. Not a man in 
Britain, neither the earliest inhabitant, the Celts nor 
the devouring swarms that poured forth from the 
Rocky passes of present Scotland was able to throw 
them down, much less to build them. The strong- 
est part of a wall is no better than the weakest, but 
the savages found neither. What was two legions 
to protect two hundred miles? And Roman walls 
were built elsewhere as effective in other provinces 
of the empire. They strung them along from the 
Rhine to the Danube. They built them at the passes 
of Thermopylae, where the three hundred Greeks 
distinguished themselves in holding back the Per- 
sians, running a long line into the mountains of 



386 NOT GIVEN TO ABSTRACT TRUTHS. 

Thessaly. They built the long wall of Thrace to 
keep cut the hordes of the Danube and save Con- 
stantinople, running it northward parallel to the 
Euxine and lastly the two separate walls, which ran 
one for sixty and one for two hundred miles 
through the Caucasus to shut out the Scythians, 
and which the Romans and Persians as long as they 
kept their agreements good, maintained separately 
for common defense. Barbarians of the cold north 
needed no< walls, but they needed armor and 
weapons, and they needed a navy, or at least a 
knowledge of shipbuilding, and they found this 
knowledge in their intercourse with the Romans. 
When the Goths first descended from the upper 
Euxine through the Hellespont in the third century 
the character of their craft was very remarkable, 
not only in the size of their vessels, which were cap- 
able of holding twelve to fifteen men each, but there 
was not a nail in their construction, not a rivet nor 
a bolt, and while they were flat bottomed, against 
which the pressure of the water was very great, the 
seams were held tight and the boards fastened with 
the ligaments or tendons of animals. The Romans 
soon showed them how to construct vessels that 
were serviceable enough before long to carry them 
to Britain or to Africa, and while the Goths were 
no great artificers at anytime in metals, they had 
the privilege of supplying themselves from the 
forges of their masters. As often as the Romans 
forbid the sale of weapons to them, they relaxed the 
severity of the laws as their necessities became 
stringent. The Romans were as anxious to sell as 
their competitors were anxious to buy- When the 
Goths besought the privilege of crossing the Danube 
without arms a few years later, they were allowed 
to keep them by giving hostages that they would 






NOT GIVEN TO ABSTRACT TRUTHS. 387 

not use them against the Romans. In all things the 
Romans showed themselves skilled artificers and 
tacticians without which knowledge their bravery 
would have been no equal match against their ene- 
mies. Vigor and robustness came from the moun- 
tains ; effeminacy from the plains, and it was only 
a few years when the Barbarian plunderers learn- 
ing the habits, acquired the vices of their conquerors 
and then commenced their decay. When the Franks 
with the confederate tribes crossed the Rhine and 
held the country to the Loire and the Seine, and 
their capital in Paris, they were in the fullness of 
vigor and easily subdued the Burgundians and Ale- 
manni that dwelt near the present provinces of 
Alsace and Loraine, but they degenerated early and 
were no better than the tribes which they over- 
threw. In the field as in the forum, the moral sense 
receives the first blow and human rights cannot be 
maintained when that is obliterated. Clovis in a 
short reign relaxed into his old ways ; his life was 
short and his reign enfeebled, and he seems to have 
embraced Christianity in compliance with the earnest 
wish of his wife, and in answer to a vow, that if 
he was victorious he would accept the god of Clo- 
tilda. Gibbon says, he was a robber, a liar and a 
murderer, but Macaulay, with more discreetness and 
perhaps sympathy, says, that "All of the Teutonic 
, invaders, Clovis, Alboin and others, were zealous 
Christians." Perhaps it was a passion with Gib- 
bon to call all Christian" invaders or conquerors evil 
names, as he elsewhere calls the Normans of the 
Conquest in England, pirates. 

It is a melancholy fact that railers against Chris- 
tianity have been able to suppress or distort the 
truth of history as Renan in our day becomes ridicu- 
lous digging in the foundations of Tyre and the 



388 CONSTANTINOPLE. 

"Holy Biblus" to discover some vestige of the 
"women of the ancient mysteries" and forgetting 
entirely the women of the Gospel whose loving de- 
votion was so dear to the heart of our Lord. There 
is a wide gulf between Philip drunk and Philip 
sober. 

We may now fairly conclude that the character- 
istic traits, the habits and inclinations of the Romans 
did not lead them to the investigation or discovery 
of abstract truths, and that while they did not pur- 
chase and no Syrian could sell to them a discovery 
of such practical value, without the fact being either 
claimed or discussed by at least one party or the 
other to the outside world, the fact remains that 
some at least of the ingredients of Greek fire were 
not to be found westward of the Euxine and the 
Hellespont, and therefore the discovery must be 
confined to Eastern nations. Sulphur could be ob- 
tained anywhere in Sicily and the volcanic regions, 
while the oil of Media or bitumen or petroleum was 
a native production of Persia or Arabia and Tartary 
with its soil mingled with niter in abundance which 
was the only ingredient necessary to make the com- 
bustion explosive. It may be said, and we do not 
wish to be misunderstood, that the accidental dis- 
covery of the effect of intermingling the three in- 
gredients might have been discovered in the latter 
country, while the two former, which could be had 
in the far East as well as in Roman lands, was 
transported hither in the caravan trade. Neither 
Syria nor Persia, nor Arabia, nor the lands north 
or east of the Euphrates have ever made any claim 
whatever, that they used or had knowledge of any 
such discovery till they obtained it long after the 
Greeks had saved the city and the Mosque of St. 
Sophia not only from barbarians, but from the cruel 



CONSTANTINOPLE. 389 

and relentless war of extermination, which the 
fanatics of Islam imposed upon their Christian 
neighbors. What disposition can rationally be made 
of the tradition, that Callinichus imparted all the 
knowledge of the discovery when made, or the par- 
ticulars of the composition of Greek fire will appear 
later in the siege of Constantinople. In the present 
view there is nothing that seems to indicate that the 
Romans as such knew anything of this compound, 
either by purchase or discovery, till the third cen- 
tury, and as their territory was so extensive and the 
subject nations very shortly became homogeneous, 
and as neither themselves nor the barbarians claimed 
to know anything of the ingredients or the knowl- 
edge of its use anywhere, and besides were not 
skilled as inventors from their nature and habits to- 
gether with the fact that the materials were not in 
common use in Europe, so as to be articles of 
merchandise, we may fairly claim that all these 
people were excluded from participating in the bene- 
fit of a probable discovery. We must further ex- 
clude the Turks, the Russians and the Arabs, as 
they did not appear in history till after the siege of 
Constantinople when the discovery was a secret of 
the Eastern Empire, the Imperial City, in contra- 
distinction from Rome. 

Constantinople occupies the seat of the ancient 
Byzantium on the straits, which separate Europe 
from Asia. As the former city it had a history, 
which carried it back within one hundred years of 
the foundation of Rome. The great navigator 
Byzas, a Greek, who followed the seas and pro- 
claimed himself the son of Neptune, set up his gods 
and established his authority 656 years before the 
Christian era. The Bosphorus so called, which 
flows south from the Euxine or Black Sea for a 



390 CONSTANTINOPLE. 

hundred and twenty miles, till it reaches the Helles- 
pont, broadens from one and a half to three miles 
before it reaches the Mediterranean during a fur- 
ther progress of sixty miles. How many times the 
fortunes of the city rose and fell in the contests be- 
tween Athens and Sparta or Philip of Macedon 
over the control of the city, we may not determine, 
but eventually when Greece fell into Roman hands, 
it seemed to be their joy to destroy everything that 
was Grecian and Septimius Severus about a hun- 
dred and ninety-six A. D., leveled it to the ground, 
but the Goths taking advantage of the fall to make 
inroads into Thrace and Asia, the Romans were 
compelled to restore the city, which continued to 
grow in strength and importance in spite of wars 
and proximity of the Goths till the year 328, when 
Constantine made it the foundation of his Empire, 
or, as it was called, the New . Rome. From Con- 
stantine to the fall of the Eastern capital, a period 
of over eleven hundred years, the city was besieged 
about twenty times and was taken but thrice. Dur- 
ing the era of the Crusades, it was taken by Franks 
and Venetians and held for fifty-six years, a most 
disgraceful act for the kingdom of Italy. The Huns 
attacked it in 450 ; the Huns and Slavs under Jus- 
tinian and the Persians and Avars in the reign of 
Heraclius, but all in vain. It was besieged by 
Alexius Comnenus in 108 1 and finally captured by 
Mahomet Second in 1453, and has remained in pos- 
session of the Turks till the present time. In 626, 
when the Persians and the Avars attacked the city, 
we make the first approach to the use of Greek fire, 
which is going to play such an important part in the 
safety of the city for the next four hundred years. 
The fall of the Western Empire and the building up 
of the Eastern part which remained was of momen- 



CONSTANTINE. 391 

tous consequence to all of their inhabitants. In the 
one hundred and fifty years which elapsed in that 
time, the rivalry between the capital cities was con- 
stant and severe. The people of Italy were proud 
of their history and more proud of their 
ancestry, as noble families cling to their titles 
when their wealth is frittered away. But the 
genius of Rome was expiring with the valor of its 
arms, militarism was the prophetic stone on which 
their renown was built. The sons of aliens learned 
the discipline which the Romans lost and the City of 
the Straits was to be the last bulwark of the Em- 
pire for a thousand years. 

The situation of the city was the most admirable 
that could be conceived. Its strategic importance 
began to be estimated when it was found that the 
barbarians from Germany and Scythia following 
either the Danube or the mountains to the Euxine, 
threw themselves either on the defenseless coast of 
Asia Minor or the Plain of Thrace. The city was 
about fifty miles farther from the Danube than was 
Rome. The wars with Persia on the East seemed 
of endless duration. To transport their armies, the 
Romans had to submit to a largely increased ex- 
pense by its distance from the metropolis without 
any special advantages that could be gained for any 
country but Greece, anl they seemed to be careless 
for Greece more than for any other province. More- 
over the Barbarians after arriving in Thrace found 
Constantinople too stongly guarded to give them 
any prospect of capture when they almost univers- 
ally headed for Rome, whose defenses were less 
impregnable. The Goths themselves, when once 
they were permitted to locate land in the Empire, 
spread themselves among the hills and valleys of 
Greece. Sometimes they paid tribute ; sometimes 



392 CONSTANTINE. 

they exacted tribute, but they were not the worst 
enemies Rome ever had. Many thousands joined 
the Roman armies when the Roman youth were in- 
capable or unwilling to fight and they always had 
such respect for their superiors, they called them- 
selves allies and auxiliaries, and even Romans. Fur- 
ther than this, it is believed Constantine wished to 
rid himself of the thralldom, which the popes were 
exercising first of all over the Italians, and then on 
the cities beyond the Alps, in that they were strug- 
gling to unite temporal and spiritual power, which 
Constantine showed all through his subsequent his- 
tory he was anxious to prevent or counteract. 

Constantine was a soldier when first he arrived 
in Gaul. He had been detained at the court of 
Diocletian in Nicomedia not far from Constanti- 
nople, it is believed, as a hostage for his father, who 
was sent to Britain, and as soon as Diocletian con- 
sented to his visit, he made an exceedingly rapid 
journey and reached his father just as he was set- 
ting out from Boulogne and accompanied him to 
Britain. Some time after arriving, his father died at 
York and the army invested the son Constantine 
with the purple. He subsequently reduced to sub- 
jection all the warlike tribes in Gaul and Germany, 
and on the Rhine and the Danube, and as one of 
six colleagues he overcame them by the rapidity of 
his marches, by his tactful address and by his cour- 
teous manner of yielding where to decline would 
be dangerous, the last rival being Licinius whom he 
besieged at Byzantium, followed across the Bos- 
phorus after his escape and at last subdued him and 
sent him an exile to Thessalonica, where he soon 
died. 

Before Constantine's reign the emperors acquired 
the habit of living in some remote city as pleasure 






CONSTANTINE DIES. 393 

and convenience seemed to dictate. Diocletian 
passed his days between Nicomedia and his villa in 
Thrace and seldom appeared in Rome. Constantine 
in all his military expeditions beyond the Alps and 
the Rhine was but twice in that city. There the 
generals of the army were compelled to report east 
or west, and the ministers of finance and govern- 
ment were unwilling or unable to call them from 
their retreat. Then in 364 the government was di- 
vided between the capitals and also there was a 
division of the Roman territory in 395 between 
Arcadius and Hpnorius, who were elected em- 
perors, the one taking the east and the other the 
west, which drew with fatal effect the capitals from 
each other. 

Constantinople was a Greek city, its inhabitants 
were nearly all Greek, as ancient Byzantium had 
been from its foundation, but the language of the. 
court and the laws it promulgated were all Latin. 
Most of the institutions were copied from the liter- 
ature of Rome. The scholars that had so long come 
from Germany to be educated and from Gaul and 
Britain, became more enthusiastic for the new city 
as the grandeur of the old was eclipsed by the new. 
The Barbarians that had a predilection for peace 
were allowed to come in small numbers, within the 
city gates ; very many of the Goths and other tribes 
were allies if not auxiliaries of the army and as they 
were all Arians and the Christian or Catholic ele- 
ment was Athanasian, the disputes were often 
serious and vexatious. The emperors claimed re- 
lief from constant fusilades of courtiers and army 
magnates who had offices to solicit or friends to 
promote and they maintained at a safe distance the 
quiet of the villas, but corruption brought on de- 
cline and decline meant loss of territory. 



394 MAHOMETANS AND THE 7TH CENTURY. 

Constantine died in 337 and in the reign of his 
successors the possessions of the Empire gradually 
dwindled away till the time of Heraclius, a period of 
over three hundred years. The Western Empire 
abandoned Britain in 438. Gaul fell to the tribes 
of Germany with as much a hold as possible by the 
popes. The Vandals took Africa, Sicily and the 
Islands and the new Persia which succeeded the 
Parthian kingdom — the Sassanians, took back all 
the lands beyond the Euphrates, which the valor 
of Trajan, Aurelian and Julian had won. They 
divided Armenia with the Romans and levied a 
tribute upon them of eleven thousand pounds. All 
that remained to the Romans was from Tyre to 
Trebizond on the Black Sea, a part of Greece and 
Italy and the adjacent coasts of Asia Minor. Car- 
thage still remained, but Egypt, which had been 
exempt from war since Diocletian was again sub- 
dued by the Persians. In the beginning of the 
Seventh Century, they had taken Damascus, Jeru- 
salem and Antioch, and in 616 appeared on the 
Eastern shore of the Bosphorus at Chalcedon, 
where, without attacking the city they held their 
camp for ten years and to all the suppliant em- 
bassies of the city they manifested supreme con- 
tempt. Neither would they accept tribute. In .this 
emergency Heraclius, who was ex-arch at Carthage 
after the fall of the Vandals, was recalled and 
made emperor. The arch-bishop confiscated the 
consecrated plate of the churches and even Alexan- 
dria sent donations to swell the modest wealth of 
the city. By this means he was able to collect from 
every quarter and provide the expenses of an army 
and Heraclius started by sea with a fleet, which 
could not be circumvented as an army would be 
by land, and passing to the east entered the harbor 



CONSTANTINOPLE ATTACKED. 395 

of Scanderon in Cilicia, pursued his course through 
the Black sea and the mountains of Armenia and 
passing the winter on the shores of the Caspian 
he reached Ispahan, the following spring, the heart 
of Persia. Chosroes hastened home to battle with 
the Romans and with much skirmishing at length 
ventured a battle at Nineveh, where he was over- 
thrown, and a few years later was murdered and 
the house of Sassan came to an end in 640. Hera- 
clius returned home at the expiration of three 
years having made an alliance with the Turks whom 
he found dwelling on the north bank of the .Oxus, 
and received from them a re-inforcement of forty 
thousand horse. 

In the meantime, Chosroes had made an alliance 
with the Avars who had come down from the 
Northeast, nearly a century before, and on arriving 
at Constantinople in 626, Heraclius found they 
had broken through the long wall of Thrace and 
assaulted the capital. In their long acquaintance 
with the Romans, they had learned the science of 
attack, they advanced under cover of protected 
roofs. Their engines threw volleys of stones and 
darts and twelve lofty towers, which they built, 
gave them an ample view of the city. In this 
emergency they were surprised by a sudden down- 
pour of fire, which was uttered forth from the 
mouths of engines within the city walls. The 
Avars wavered and then withdrew from their lofty 
towers and set them on fire. What ships they had 
in the harbor, they also set on fire and burned and 
the Chagan commenced a retreat. The Persians 
were unable to help their allies as they had no 
boats to cross the straits and no shipping of any 
kind, which the Greeks would not have destroyed, 
when once thev had set out for the Western shore. 



396 THE AVARS RETREAT FROM SUDDEN FIRE. 

Besides the Persians carried on their wars against 
the Romans with very little spirit, when they were 
away from the sight of their capital. They were 
both equally faithless and pressed their deception 
at every opportunity to cover up broken premises 
and conceal new plans of taking advantage of each 
other. They were like lovers, who in a fit of spleen 
or jealousy become estranged and after the bitter- 
ness is endured for a while become weary and 
learn to kiss and make-up. 

In the struggle for succession Chosroes had once 
fled to the Romans, who were proud to receive him 
and accept his confidence. It was impossible to 
starve the city, because the sea was open to their 
merchant vessels, and they traded with Alexandria 
and Carthage and other ports in Africa with Sicily 
the great granary of the west, and ports on the 
Black sea, a great shipping point for corn and in 
times of scarcity with Gaul from whither they 
brought it down the Rhone rapidly into the Medi- 
terranean. 

The historian who dismisses the siege of Constan- 
tinople with the remark that the "powers of fire 
and mechanics were used with superior art and 
success," gives us no information of what that fire 
consisted, nor the nature of the mechanics, which 
were used to deliver it with success upon the heads 
of the besiegers. In a previous att?~k upon the 
city in the time of Justinian, 553 A. ±J., he coolly 
informs us the city was "saved by the union and 
fermentation of iron and sulphur," and about the 
same time, when the Persians attacked Colchis, 
which lay at the mouth of the Phasis, which emp- 
ties into the north end of the Black sea, he says, 
"Sulphur and bitumen, which might be called oil 
of Medea, was first used," which certainly is an 



CONSTANTINOPLE BESEIGED. 397 

error as has before been shown as early as the 
reign of Zenobia, if not of Septimius Severus 201 
A. D., the oil of Medea or bitumen had been used 
for the same purpose at the sieges of Atra and 
Palmyra. Now it requires no great discernment 
to perceive that the oil of Medea or petroleum and 
sulphur were but little more active agents in pro- 
tecting a city than would be either of the ingredi- 
ents by themselves if the mechanical power em- 
ployed was simply able to cast them over the wall, 
which could be done by hand, as in this instance 
of the Avars they were the besiegers and not the 
besieged ; they knew nothing of the use of this de- 
structive compound, while the besieged not only 
had the knowledge, but they had no use of me- 
chanical engines, when they could do the work by 
hand from the tops of the wall. Fire brands, bitu- 
men and sulphur did not require active agents to dis- 
tribute them from inside the walls, but when you 
put them in combination with an explosive, the best 
mechanical power was requisite to give them suita- 
ble effect. We doubt if under cover of their tor- 
toises, as they were called, with uninflammable 
roofs and only the two ingredients were used by 
the besiege a they could have put an army to flight 
as these Greeks are said to have done. 

Now one horn or the other of this dilemma must 
be supported, either the combatants knew nothing 
of Greek fire, in which case mechanical contriv- 
ances for dispersing the fire are fruitless and should 
not be mentioned together as though they were in 
constant and necessary connection with each other, 
or else the real Greek fire was known before 626 
in the siege here mentioned. If we have the im- 
plement for delivering Greek fire, we certainly must 
have the fire, and we have no knowledge that any 



398 THE ARABS WERE MASTERS OF SCIENCE. 

considerable improvement had been made between 
626 and 679 by which the three ingredients of sul- 
phur, bitumen and nitre, which constitute, as we 
believe, the real Greek fire, could be dispersed with 
greater effect than when there were only two ; we 
conclude that the siege of 679 was equipped the 
same as the one that preceded and only had what 
it had borrowed from its neighbors. 

Constantinople was besieged by the Arabs for 
six years, from 672 to 679, and again in 717 by the 
same people and for the same purpose, to spread the 
religion of Islam or Mohammedanism. This war 
was one of religions and not of races ; it was char- 
acterized by a ferocity that put to blush all former 
wars and deluged with blood more than one-third 
of the face of the globe. From an obscure city and 
an obscure family it drew within its charmed circle 
not only generals with the talent of conducting 
great armies, of sultans and caliphs whose ambi- 
tion was to equip and support them, but men of 
knowledge, of science and letters, who knew how 
to build great cities as well as to overthrow them, 
skillful to conduct negotiations, able to look ahead 
and patient for results, which were born of brain 
and not of muscle, a living embodiment of all the 
forces which the times produced, coupled with an 
enthusiam that forgot obstacles, forgot possibilities, 
forgot their own blood in the destruction of their 
enemies and on the altar of superstition, consecrated 
their lives, their fortunes and their eternal hopes to 
build an imperishable monument, not to God but to 
Allah, the God of Mahomet. It is clearly apparent 
he had an eye to his own interests by the revela- 
tions, which he promulgated from time to time as 
his own necessities were discovered, that the kind- 
ness which he inflexibly maintained towards his 



MAHOMET. 399 

wife, Cadi j ah, was more potent than command and 
more resourceful than argument and to Abu Tali, 
his uncle, and AH, his son, he opened up such splen- 
dors of this life and the world to come that they 
insensibly embraced his opinions while appearing 
to oppose them. To the obsequious Zeid he offered 
freedom and to the Koreish of Medina, who bitterly 
opposed his pretentions, and to the chief ruler of 
Mecca, who conspired to slay him, he replied by 
escaping in the dead of night to Medina, which 
has fixed the memorable era of the Hegira, from 
which proceeds the lunar years of Mahometans. 
His famous doctrine, "there is but one God and 
Mahomet is his prophet," is perhaps the boldest as- 
sertion ever conceived and embraced by one man 
to connect his image with the Almighty. 

To one who inquired of his ancestry he answered, 
producing his sword, "this is my pedigree." He 
came to his doctrine by no sudden inspiration; he 
was in a land of Jews and Christians and they uni- 
formly taught their belief in one God, whatever 
false views they may have associated with it. They 
had been settled in that land for over six hundred 
years and their beliefs had attracted the consent of 
vast numbers of men. Mahomet was a great read- 
er of the Jewish writings and he slightly changed 
"the sword of the Lord and of Gideon" and sub- 
stituted therefor the more pleasing name to him of 
Mahomet, which he said to Cadijah, his wife, was 
better. If he could make the people believe this 
he had a secure title for pre-eminence, as his terres- 
trial life was an image or concept of the celestial 
and the principle of reverence and worship of the 
infinite which was felt in all their hearts would 
lift him head and shoulders above the race of man- 
kind. 



400 SPREAD OF THE SYSTEM IN TEN YEARS. 

In the course of ten years he had secured a suf- 
ficient number of followers to publish his faith 
openly and to draw the sword to supplement his 
faith. He attacked the caravans, which carried 
the commerce of the east to the west. The Per- 
sians who always made claim to Arabia were his 
nearest neighbors on the north and east, and the 
Mahometan faith was presented to them in an 
auspicious moment, when the house of Sassan, the 
second great empire of Persia, was passing away ; 
further than this the result of the battle resembling 
a skirmish turned out so disastrously for the Per- 
sians they soon lost what little hope they had and 
their enemies were correspondingly elated. While 
the Persian bowed under the severe stroke of Islam 
there suddenly appeared upon the scene a new com- 
petitor for glory and empire from the far north, 
the hated Turk, who had once before made himself 
familiar to them and the Romans. His dominions 
extended from the right bank of the Oxus west- 
ward to an unknown distance and northward to the 
neighborhood of the Arctic Circle, while the south 
bank of the same river was occupied by the Persians, 
and Chosroes had married the daughter of the 
Turkish chief, so that the Persian soon found him- 
self hemmed in by two warring nations, one of 
which was a desperately religious enthusiast and the 
other without any religion was willing, to throw his 
sword into the scale of the victorious warrior. The 
Turk was already an ally of the Romans and in spite 
of his affiliation with the heir of the house of Sas- 
san, he contributed not a little to its overthrow. 
The Arabs established themselves in Persia by the 
middle of the Seventh Century. In the meantime 
they had overrun Syria, Palestine and Egypt and 
they continued their victorious career to Carthage 



TERRORIZE THREE CONTINENTS. 401 

and Spain by the opening of the Eighth Century. 
Therefore, when they appeared at Constantinople 
in 668, or as one author has it in 672, the terror 
of their name had spread consternation throughout 
Europe and the Eastern capital. 

The Saracens were so far superior to the Per- 
sians in military preparations, they were possessed 
of a fleet and since the conquest of Syria, they had 
control of the mountains of Lebanon and cut large 
quantities of ship timber and piled it along the 
Phoenecian coast at Jaffa to build and equip the 
vessels of Egypt as they were needed. The Arab- 
ian fleet cast anchor seven miles from the city and 
from night till dawn, till dawn again, they pushed 
their impetuous columns from the Golden Gate to 
the Eastern Promontory and placed their battering 
rams and engines of war in position to attack the 
walls according to military precedent. But great 
dangers are sometimes averted by great resources 
and when they commenced to man the ramparts 
for a siege, there came down upon them a rain of 
artificial fire, such as they had no record in all his- 
tory. The walls were lofty and solid, the flying 
flame seemed to them the messenger of death and 
the blast of trumpets and the shrill sound of lead- 
ers invoking to battle with the promise of immeas- 
urable rewards here and of Paradise hereafter, 
seemed to have lost their wonted inspiration. The 
Roman energy was re-kindled with the fires that 
burnt up or destroyed the movable turrets. When 
once the fire was started, it was not easily put out 
and the engines of the besieged threw the devour- 
ing element with great energy and at immense dis- 
tances. The fugitives that had fled from the fall 
of Damascus and Alexandria entered the gates and 
worked the engines with enthusiasm till the Sara- 



402 CALLINICHUS AND GREEK FIRE. 

cens abandoning further hope on the appearance of 
winter, retreated sixty miles away to Cyzicus, where 
they had their magazine of stores with the loss of 
thirty thousand and the venerable Job, who had once 
succored the prophet. 

For six years the same tactics were repeated 
with no visible sign of success, when in dispair 
they made peace with the Romans and a solemn 
truse for thirty years and a heavy tribute and a 
farewell. That the generals and the caliphs re- 
spected this truce is apparent as they did not again 
appear in Asia Minor till 717, when the siege was 
renewed by a remarkably obstinate attack and de- 
fense of the capital by the two armies and the im- 
mense slaughter which the Greek fire wrought with 
the followers of Islam. They were now possessed 
with a mortal fear of this compound, which could 
not be attacked or put out. Their chief resource 
was confined to keeping out of its reach, but the 
vessels of Alexandra and Africa were subject to 
the same malign influences and the mariners of 
many hundred transports deserted in a body to the 
Christians. Famine and disease followed in the 
train of this unholy war to the disconfiture of 
Moslemah. Leo, the Isaurian, was now on the 
throne of Constantinople. As soon as he heard of 
the invasion, he set himself to meet it with the 
courage that put to shame the feeble emperors 
who had preceded him. He drew from the Dan- 
ube an army of Bulgarians by suitable gifts and 
promises, and these savages inflicted a slaughter of 
twenty-two thousand. The instinct of fear gave 
rise to the story, which was not disputed by the 
Romans, that the Franks from beyond the seas were 
arming in their defence. Added to this the insuf- 
ficient supply of food was a great drawback, while 



ONLY SULPHUR AND BITUMEN. 403 

the city being supplied with abundance from the 
fisheries caused them to hesitate, and after a siege 
of thirteen months the Caliph consented that Mos- 
lemah should retreat. In its departure through 
Bythinia, a large part of the army was cut to pieces 
and the fleet was so damaged by fire and tempest 
that only five galleys entered the port of Alexandria. 

We are chiefly concerned with the statement of 
the historian, namely, "The important secret of com- 
pounding and directing the artificial flame was im- 
parted by Callinichus, a native of Heliopolis, in 
Syria, who deserted from the service of the Caliph 
to that of the Emperor." The historian in this case 
is careful to observe that "He should suspect his 
own ignorance and that of the Greek guides, who 
are so jealous of the truth," and it may be said 
so indifferent to relate it. Now all the particulars of 
the reign of Zenobia for four or five hundred years 
earlier are related with minute accuracy of her hus- 
band and of his murderer and the manner by which 
she made the murderer pay the penalty of his life, 
together with the confession of Aurelian that bv 
the use of artificial fire thrown from her military 
engines and every species of missile weapons she 
was armed with such desperate courage, that he 
could only trust in the protecting deities of Rome. 

Now to state that the important secret of com- 
pounding this flame was imparted by Callinichus is 
not pertinent, for he has already said that in 201 
A. D., at the siege of Atra in Persia, the siege train 
of Septimius Severus was burned with naphtha, 
while in this case the principal ingredients of Greek 
fire was naphtha or liquid bitumen, though he after- 
wards adds, it was mingled with sulphur and pitch. 
Let it be understood, then, that it was naphtha, sul- 
phur and pitch. We have yet to see that these alone 



404 CALLINICHUS BUT LITTLE KNOWN. 

constituted the main ingredients of Greek fire. If it 
be so, then Greek fire was never in the sieges above 
mentioned, because he relates that it was an obsti- 
nate flame, the size of a hogshead and with a tail 
like a dragon and report of thunder, which manifestly 
was far beyond the power of bitumen and sulphur. A 
fire of this kind would be nothing more than throw- 
ing a torch, which was no discovery at all and noth- 
ing which required an engine to disperse it, or 
which when dispersed, could produce a report like 
thunder and fly with the velocity of lightning. Fur- 
ther, the world is now and always has been familiar 
with the use of fire ; but when we speak of any 
mechanical arrangement in connection with its use, 
we mean something more than ordinary fire, and so 
we must construe all cases, where they are asso- 
ciated together. In this way, if we have nothing- 
more than sulphur and bitumen, the world had 
known it five hundred years before the siege of 
Constantinople. The evidence points conclusively 
that the thunder and lightning evolved from a fire 
the size of a hogshead must have been the result of 
an explosion and not of simple fire, and that ex- 
plosion could occur in no other way, as we believe, 
than by the addition of nitre. How this could have 
happened and the fact have not been published to 
the world in some form has been stated. 

Let us look at Callinichus. He is but little 
known, at least he is not well known, and that 
makes the claim more suspicious. As a native of 
Heliopolis in the Syrian desert, between Damascus 
and Palmyra, where the caravans usually travel, 
when they take the central road, coming up from 
the Gulf, it is certain he was neither a hermit nor 
a recluse. It is very remarkable that he should 
have an invention of such a valuable character to 



CALLINICHUS A FORTUNATE MAN. 405 

deliver at a time when its need was of the greatest 
possible moment ; when the arms of Islam had over- 
thrown the cities of Syria and in the height of their 
fame were planning to take the last stronghold of 
the Christian faith, not a Christian himself and 
obviously long enough possessed of the secret to 
have derived the greatest benefit from the Sultan 
if he had been so disposed. It would have ap- 
proached a miracle if he had rejected the oppor- 
tune moment and keeping the secret within his own 
breast had thrown it without recompense to the 
Christian dogs. Such a possibility may mean little 
or much to those who interpret the history, but 
we are far from believing that the knowledge of 
Greek fire was known only so late as the siege last 
mentioned. We would sooner believe Callinichus 
came into the knowledge of it from some forefgn 
source, presumably from China, by way of caravan 
and that he made it an object to advance his in- 
terests in some way by claiming the secret of its dis- 
covery or preparation as his own. He may have 
come into the discovery much as McPherson, who 
could not write, himself, but could interpret the 
poems of Ossian and by adding here and there a 
line and supplementing them with links and amend- 
ments, which he was able to furnish, made the 
work of another appear as his own. He was not 
like the great navigator, who had opened up a new 
world, about which he had dreamed and read and 
written until he had made the foundation of a bril- 
liant discovery. Rather was he the fortunate man 
who, seeing a smouldering fagot, which somebody 
had left uncovered, picked it up, brought it to life 
again, and with skillful hands and trifling loss ar- 
rested the conflagration of a great city. It was in 
the end setting up the despotism of the gun with 



406 GREEK FIRE SAVED CONSTANTINOPLE. 

all its cruelties for the despotism of the sword, 
which was itself more cruel, as Aaron's rod swal- 
lowed up all other rods. With but a small part of 
its effective force so opportunely engaged, devel- 
oped and dedicated to Christianity, it rolled back 
the terrible torrent which had startled the nations 
of Western Europe and quenched the hopes of the 
East in blood till the absorbing and brutalizing 
process of Islamism could be verified and its limits 
determined by the virtue, the valor and the re- 
sources of the nations which were first to develop 
under Charles Martel on the Plain of Tours. The 
innocent agent of procuring this combustible, or 
explosive as it may be termed, while thinking no 
doubt of personal and immediate gain, was worthy 
of the lasting gratitude of the nation, and for the 
Greeks, who guarded it with scrupulous care, it 
was the Palladium of their liberties for four hun- 
dred years. Whatever opinion we may form of 
the nature of this compound, whether two or three 
or more ingredients, nothing new developed for 
several centuries to pave the way for modern fire- 
arms. The weapons of the Greeks were the weap- 
ons of the world, with this invaluable discovery 
not yet set free. 

The City of Constantinople was attacked four 
times from 782 to 1043 — Dv the Hungarians in 
924, by Alexius Comnenius in 108 1, by the Franks 
and Venetians in 1204, an d occupied by them -till 
1260, and attacked by the Turks once after the Cru- 
sades, and finally taken in 1453 by that nation. 
Mahomet died in 632 at the age of sixty-three years, 
and the reign of the Caliphs commenced two years 
later. In that time the Crescent has passed be- 
yond Africa, across the Straits of Gibraltar into 
Spain by the year 710, and, crossing the Pyrenees, 



MOHAMMEDAN EMPIRE FALLS BACK. 407 

it reached out one thousand miles from the coast 
of Africa, fighting its way along the Rhone and 
the Loire till its victorious arms were suddenly 
checked by the valor and genius of Charles Mar- 
tel, son of the elder Pepin and Duke of the Franks, 
in j$2. Christianity had a chance to breathe from 
the Crescent and the scimeter, and the tide of war 
was eventually rolled back in the East, so that in 
three hundred years from the death of Mahomet 
all Spain, Africa and most of Syria, including Da- 
mascus, Antioch and the cities of Cilicia had been 
lost to their arms and restored to their ancient 
rulers, and Persia had recovered five of her former 
cities, including Nisibis in Armenia, which Jovian 
was compelled to give back to the Persians on the 
retreat and death of Julian. The passage of the 
Tigris, which had been so long denied to the arms or 
even the sight of the Romans, was again opened up, 
and although on the retreat or return of the Greeks 
the fugitive Princes in some cases regained their 
capitol, Antioch, Cilicia and the Isle of Cyprus 
became permanent additions to the Eastern capital. 
Only Bagdad remained to the Caliphs, who held 
this important centre for over five hundred years. 

From the latter half of the Seventh Century to 
that of the Eleventh Century the Greeks, or as they 
called themselves, Romans, held in strict secrecy 
the knowledge of the ingredients which combined 
and saved their city! There was neither motive 
nor ability to bring the compound to a higher state 
of efficiency, or to popularize the discovery, so long 
as it subserved their purpose. It does not appear 
that they instituted any experiments by chemical 
analysis to make the two or three ingredients ex- 
plosive, or to introduce projectiles. They may not 
have known what an explosion meant, and a period 



408 THE SARACENS. THEIR RELIGION. 

of four hundred years was necessary before some 
thoughtless traveler, in kindling a fire, threw the 
nitre and the refuse of wood fire — the charcoal — ■ 
into mutual relations with each other. Nitre itself 
was not explosive, and at this time the oil of 
Medea, or petroleum, seems to have dropped out 
and charcoal came in, as we hear very little of pe- 
troleum afterward. We believe at this time the 
discovery was complete, so far as the combustion 
was concerned, but the propelling force did not 
appear till after or about the time of the Crusades, 
when it became a projectile. We believe that the 
terrible secret was permitted to remain hidden so 
as to avoid the possibility of some unscrupulous per- 
son blazing it abroad. In the hands of one person 
of known loyalty it was safe. In the hands of sev- 
eral the danger would be increased as many times 
more. At this time, under the reign of Leo the 
Isaurian, and Theophilus and Pope Leo IV, the 
city enjoyed its greatest prosperity, commerce 
spread its wings, but the vigor of the Saracens 
dwindled away into the same channels of luxury 
as had the Romans, and in this case they were of 
material benefit to them in later years. They 
brought out and studied the various writings of 
the Greeks, in science, philosophy and medicine 
and in physics, and when they were inclined to 
levity, with a tinge of seriousness added, they pur- 
sued alchemy instead of astrology. They recov- 
ered some books that would have been lost to the 
world without them. They were prolific writers 
themselves, especially in Spain for five hundred 
years, when darkness had settled over Europe. As 
this period of darkness began to pass away, it is 
believed they instituted the use of closed tubes by 
which gunpowder was projected, and it cannot be 



THE SARACENS. NO IMAGES. 409 

disproved that they invented gunpowder before the 
time they were driven from Spain into Africa by 
Ferdinand and Isabella. At this time we are writ- 
ing they had not become so conspicuous in benefits 
to the outside world, and what they did not produce 
themselves they purchased freely of their neigh- 
bors, so that luxury became to be the rage with 
them, as it had been with the Romans. The Ca- 
liph's slaves were clothed in splendid apparel, their 
belts glittering with gold and gems. His palace 
was profusely furnished with the choicest tapes- 
tries, many thousand of which were embroidered 
with silk and gold, a tree of gold and silver spread 
its luxurious branches on which gorgeous birds 
spread their wings of silver. 

The wisdom of the Saracens was most pro- 
nounced in their system of religion. When Ma- 
homet proclaimed the one God, he did not make 
any distinct or valuable addition to the doctrine of 
the Jews or Christians. 

In this way he avoided the antagonism and gained 
some credit for generosity. Furthermore, he pro- 
claimed a determined war against images and idols. 
He appears to have acted honestly in his earlier 
teachings, and when he found himself unable to 
succeed without arms he took to arms. He had 
before him the command of God to Israel to de- 
stroy the Canaanites root and branch, and so the 
foundation of Jewish writings allowed him to build 
a scaffold on which to hang all unbelievers. His 
life was a romance garnished with strange adven- 
tures, a poem of new and unaccustomed harmony. 
While converts were coming to his doctrine and 
coin was flying to his coffers, traffic was the only 
employment which the Arab cultivated. All oth- 
ers fell to menials. He was the Father of the Faith- 



410 NATURE WORSHIP. 

ful. His revelations inscribed in the Koran were 
of equal value with the sacred books of Israel, and 
his destruction of images shut him out from all 
alliance with paganism and pagan worshipers and 
pointed the way to claim authority with God. He 
died in the fullness of faith, saying, "I come, I 
come," equal in loftiness of utterance to the most 
heroic martyr. 

Paganism was the ruin of the Roman Empire. 
When the survivors of Troy arrived at Latium, on 
the banks of the Tiber, that river was covered 
with bushes. The hills were cut up and appor- 
tioned among the tribes of Umbrianas, Sabines, 
Oscans and Latins, and each family had its genii 
or Lares and Penates. They were children of the 
earth, they had grown up among the hostile and 
destructive forces of Nature, they had listened to 
the moan of the trees, had seen the sudden swing- 
ing and erratic charge of the elements, had shud- 
dered at the throes of thunder, and had measured 
in their limited way the effects of the lightning as 
it burned up their frail dwellings or crashed along 
the cliffs which overlooked their homes. Power is 
always represented by some visible or imaginary 
creation. In imagination Death is swallowed up of 
Life, the Creator is always greater than the thing 
created, the heroes have become gods ; why not 
the mysterious forces of Nature ? Then began the 
first impulses toward an imaginary Pantheon. As 
it had been in Assyria and Babylon, as it was with 
the Israelites, as it was with Abraham resting 
under the oaks of Mamre and pleading for the 
cities of the Plain, ready to be engulfed with fire 
for the worship of false gods ; as it was with 
Greece, perishing before her time but listening with 
wrapt ears to the voices speaking from the groves 



CHRISTIANITY. 411 

of Delphi and Daphne, the oaks of Didona and the 
sweet, mysterious cadences of the Vale of Tempe. 
Now, Nature men are not harmed by the mysteries 
of Nature. The gods whom they affect to serve are 
false gods. They are but few, their fellowship is 
sought only for good acts, and the violence that fol- 
lows long after a state or nation is developed re- 
quires that bad and base acts shall be propitiated 
by a monster as cruel, as remorseless as their own 
souls have become. Murder, rapine, license to do 
evil, licentiousness and its secret worshipers, wor- 
ship not only the sun, moon and stars, but they 
worship whatever their vain imagination may set 
up — the most ugly, cruel and degraded forms and the 
most disgusting images imagination can paint. By 
this means the better nature is killed. Luxury is 
not the only power in the destruction of nations, it 
is only a stimulant which has its root in the morbid 
and diseased creations of a man's self. If the Ro- 
man Empire could have maintained its robustness 
through all the decades of its expansion, even 
though the Satyrs dwelt in the woods and the 
Fauns on the hilltops, and the Tritons trod the 
waves, Liberty would have remained a sacred treas- 
ure, and the eagles that hovered over the city would 
have borne its arms unsullied from ocean to ocean. 
If Christianity was one of five causes in its de- 
struction, why has it so changed its character that 
it uplifts, sanctifies and ennobles every nation that 
receives it. Every system that aspires to universal 
authority must have some defects in its organiza- 
tion, some things creep in which are not needed, 
gain the respect and alliance of some individual 
which is unworthy, and the whole system receives 
a loss if not a shock thereby. Monasticism was the 
first fruits of a literal interpretation of the com- 



412 FALL OF ROME AND CHRISTIANITY. 

mands of the Gospel. Time and experience weed 
out the difficulties without destroying or endanger- 
ing the leaven which is working out the crudities 
which are inseparable from lasting structures. It 
is admitted that the winds of Africa and Arabia, 
which swept over the flying sands of the Desert, 
carried the stifled moan of many penitents who 
sought by the stripes of the body to atone for the 
sin of the soul. One or two sanguinary wars would 
have carried to the death more victims than all that 
perished with these self constituted sacrifices, which 
corrupted and destroyed nobody else, while they 
missed God and found only themselves. 

What shall be said of those that found God, de- 
voted to him the sanctity of their lives, and under 
the solemn sentence of death gave it up willingly 
to the executioner. We know very little what the 
Christian church did for two centuries after their 
Leader left it, but the most ardent unbelievers re- 
count that it went about doing good, abating the 
hardships and cruelties of war, and so opening up 
the way for the better civilization which is crown- 
ing the hopes of today. If we had nothing more 
than the seven churches of Asia, their history and 
the letters and acts of the heroic Paul, we should 
have an answer to every critic who casts a doubt 
upon the supreme importance and final conquest of 
Christianity. We can lawfully claim that Christian- 
ity did not work the ruin of Britain, Gaul or Ger- 
many, because those countries had not received 
Christianity when the Western Empire fell. We 
can maintain that Armenia and a large part of Asia 
Minor, which were the first fruits and always ear- 
nest for the faith, were as loyal subjects as the Em- 
pire ever had. It is certainly clear that Rome fell 
largely by the false gods which she introduced into 



CRUSADES. 413 

her bosom, full of all the vices which the human 
mind can conceive, cruel and lustful, but their time 
was shortened as soon as Christianity became the 
ruling religion in Rome. When there was nobody 
to believe in their existence and no one ready to 
sacrifice the temples were abandoned, but the in- 
sidious venom which had eaten its way into the 
throne of the Caesars had corrupted the morals and 
enervated their bodies and luxury was only another 
name which cropped out in the orgies and follies of 
paganism, which would not have been noticed and 
certainly not fatal if the hardy and trained veterans 
of Italy had not been followed by a breed too puny 
to hold the reins of Empire and too selfish to aban- 
don them on the road to death. Only eighty years 
intervened between the fall of Paganism and the 
fall of Rome, a time altogether too short to be saved 
by the religion of Nazareth. 

During this four hundred years in which Greek 
Fire was locked up in Constantinople with no in- 
quiry and as little concern in regard to it by neigh- 
boring nations, a Holy War, not by Saracens or in- 
fidels, nor by the undisciplined remains of Pagan- 
ism, which in some quiet quarters still survived, but 
by the followers of the Nazarene himself, surprised 
the world by its magnitude and the bitterness of its 
fury which embroiled the nations of the West with 
the East, and threw them with terrible fury against 
each other. Jerusalem had been taken by the Arabs 
in 637, and later by the Seljukian Turks, who in 
the tenth century followed Southward from the 
Oxus, and overrunning Asia Minor, now Anatolia, 
drove in the wings of the Mahometan army and 
stripped them of all their conquests in Syria. These 
Turks had forgotten all their pledges to the Empire, 
had embraced the religion of Islam, and while they 



iU THE TURKS AND CRUSADEkS. 

secretly admired the veneration of the followers of 
Christ for all that remained of the founder of their 
religion, and saw with no concern its footsteps trod- 
den by an undisciplined horde to the gates of the 
Holy Sepulcher, their vanity was inflamed by ex- 
cessive tributes which the Christians were forced to 
pay, till at length they provoked them with repeated 
insults and threats to compel them to discontinue 
their visits by the sharpness of their railery and by 
actual conflicts which they were unable to avoid. 

The Turk was bloodless in his make-up though so 
profusely he could shed blood. His natural sym- 
pathies had been blunted by the rigors of an un- 
friendly clime and by the hardships of an unsym- 
pathetic government which made him stubborn and 
revengeful. He could cover the grossest outrage 
under the most affable and pleasing exterior. His 
thickset, squatty figure, when resting on a carpet 
or a divan, resembled an idol from the banks of the 
Ganges. On the assurance of Mahomet that the 
sword was the key to hell or heaven, he bounded 
up from his seeming lethargy, declared his belief in 
the faith, and threw his sword in the balance against 
the Christian dogs. 

The crusaders began their war in 1096 by in- 
fluencing Western Europe and all the nations who 
were under the dominion of the Emperor of Con- 
stantinople, or the Pope of Rome, who were called 
upon to fight the Northern invaders. Without fol- 
lowing the dreadful avalanche which desolated Eu- 
rope of its surplus inhabitants and threw them with 
remorseless slaughter on the shores of Asia, which 
drained the resources of kings and threw it away 
on the sands of Syria, we must admire those noble 
souls, who in the heat of misrule and oppression, 
divested themselves of every glory the world had to 



JERUSALEM CONQUERED AND THEN LOST. 415 

offer them, suffered all the contempt which unsuc- 
cessful struggles threw in their way, and to the 
last battling as they believed for the glory of God, 
were cut to pieces in the desert, and with their last 
breath begged only to see the beloved city from 
which their Master had ascended to Heaven. Of 
these last were those souls whose story opened with 
'Godfrey of Bouillon and ends with St. Louis IX 
of France, who saw slip from his grasp what his 
brother with more success seemed to have obtained, 
and impatient to give up the cause which he had 
consecrated in his heart, led the two last of the nine 
Crusades and perished at Tunis, unable to get out 
of Africa. Jerusalem was conquered and recon- 
quered by the Latins and at last taken by Saladin of 
Egypt who had taken it from the Turks, after being 
in the hands of the Crusaders for eighty-eight 
years. 

We are anxious to know what relation the Cru- 
sades sustained to Greek Fire, for the Emperors had 
all knowledge of its manufacture till they com- 
menced. The first Crusaders that escaped safely 
from the Turkish sword after they had crossed the 
Straits, an undisciplined and really bigoted crowd 
of fanatics who went only from sudden and unin- 
formed impulse, broke like a great wave on the 
shores of some desolate Island and drove its ragged 
edge upon the shore in spray and foam. They 
brought nothing for a siege but what they held in 
their hands. Many of them had neither a scrip nor 
wallet, without sense in their heads nor bread in their 
bodies, or breath in their bones. Their horses were 
few. The knights, as they were called, rode them 
in armor and would not unhorse themselves to make 
teams for transport or burden. It is probable that 
their leaders were supplied with Greek Fire, as they 



416 BENEFIT OF THE CRUSADES. 

were constantly in communication with Constanti- 
nople, but as they had no- means of throwing this 
compound over the walls, while the besieged could 
easily reach the top of their walls, with the same 
means of defense, the Christians were put to a great 
disadvantage. In a few days the desperation of 
necessity set in. A straggling party observed some 
timbers near the coast adjacent to Jaffa, which had 
been thrown into a hole and abandoned, and drag- 
ging these out, they made a scaffold, after trans- 
porting them to the city, reached the walls, and the 
fury commenced. If we may believe the reports 
sometime later one of the leaders saw a sign in the 
heavens which resembled a picture of St. George, 
and crying out that the angelic band was coming 
to their deliverance, they made a sudden and suc- 
cessful attack, and Godfrey was on the top of the 
walls. How far Greek Fire was employed or per- 
mitted does not seem entirely clear, but we are told 
that the Saracens had discovered its secret before 
the siege commenced, and if so, the equal fire from 
the contending combatants would have been less 
perceptible, and its extent might not have summed 
up to very great aggregate proportions for either 
party. Possibly in the first siege and with such 
irregular attacks, the use of the combustible was 
limited, but as the struggle was kept up in some 
form with varying success for one hundred and 
seventy-six years, it must have won considerable 
merit in shortening the period of the Crusades. It 
was believed at the outset that it would unite the 
Latin and Greek princes, but when the Latins in 
1204, forgetting their allies altogether, took Con- 
stantinople away from the Greek Emperors and held 
it for fifty-six years, all signs of amity and com- 
promise were swept away. 



CHRISTIAN WORLD REVIVES. 417 

If the Crusades had done nothing more than set 
a bound to the ambitions of the Caliphs, and hold 
the fanatical followers of Islam away from Con- 
stantinople, it would have been worth a vast deal to 
the peace of the world. This it did for three hun- 
dred and fifty years, and Western Europe, in its 
era of darkness, was saved from the scimeter of the 
Saracens. 

With the abrupt close which Islam met in France 
its empire was shortened and almost disestablished. 
By that time the studious and conservative people of 
the city awoke to the future that was dawning on 
the Eastern Capitol, by the interchange of ideas 
which had flowed unrestrained where otherwise 
they had lain dormant to the Reformation, by the 
decay of feudalism which allowed private fiefs or 
holdings to increase into dukedoms in the hand of 
dukes, and they into larger divisions to form at last 
stable monarchies. The loss to Western Europe by 
the Crusades was incalculable, but its gains were far 
greater. Man had become less a subject and more 
a lord, but he was . his own lord. Talking and 
thinking became more earnest and more to the pur- 
pose. The follies are always remembered when it 
is a losing game, and the- remedies become less imag- 
inary. Deeper mining brought to the surface sub- 
terranean riches ; as the storm broke away mistakes 
were discovered. The early sun forced its way into 
porticoes and hatchways and darted under the eaves 
where bright thoughts sallied out as swallows salute 
the daybreak. It said "Good morning" to many a 
weary traveler flecked with dirt and wet with the 
midnight rain. Society was reforming. No man 
or set of men could hold the strong box into which 
all the credits of a nation were stored and hold the 
key without honest possession. The cap of Gesler 
rolled in the dirt. 



418 GUNPOWDER FOLLOWS GREEK FIRE. 

In two hundred and fifty years from the com- 
mencement of the Crusades the genius or enterprise 
of the Christian world seemed to have revived with 
new vigor. What did all wars mean, without 
swords and spears and cruel instruments of death. 
The new enterprise had this meaning. The time 
was coming, indeed had come, when the Chinese or 
Greek Fire was to put on its crown with no weak 
apology for its being and reign uncontrolled, the 
most brilliant discovery that had appeared. Gun- 
powder and fire arms preceded the art of printing 
by a hundred years. The Divine promise of "Peace 
on Earth and Good Will to Men" might have been 
chanted on the wings of the morning as the out- 
come of this discovery. It was not the reformation. 
It preceded it, dignified it, and if we will receive it, 
was a tender reminder of the flight from Paradise. 
The mission of the sword was ended, the ministry 
of Peace was to begin with new weapons ; no savage 
nation could ever control gunpowder. No Christian 
Emperor could ever lock it up as a menace to the 
rest of mankind. If it were necessary to store it, 
the Christian world would have ample means to de- 
stroy every other nation, without the savagery and 
cruelty of missile weapons. 

The exact time and place of the discovery of gun- 
powder is unknown ; the channels of information, 
as well as of trade, were not thrown open in the 
time of the Crusades, and we are less surprised that 
in the five decades after their close more and better 
knowledge of arms came to light than in the fifty 
that preceded. It did not come by the red cockades 
of chivalry, but in 1325 or 1326, in the City of 
Florence, Italy, a council of twelve was appointed 
lo superintend the manufacture of cannons of brass 
and balls of iron, and in 1327 Edward III used the 



GUNPOWDER HANDMAID OF ARTILLERY. 4l9 

first ordnance in England in his invasion of Scot- 
land. Within fifty years these munitions of war 
were considered indispensable and they were offered 
on the market in limited quantities, till the time of 
Queen Elizabeth, when taxes were paid partially in 
arms, or the material to make them. The Moors of 
Spain at that time were the most enlightened people 
in Europe, and their globes of fire, with resounding 
thunder and lightning, were their efforts at artillery. 
The moment that saltpater or nitre came in contact 
with ignited charcoal, an explosion of more or less 
force followed, and this force was equal in all direc- 
tions. Not so with the weapons of war, which were 
hurtful only at the point of contact. To harness 
this force and put it into the service of mankind, re- 
quired no great skill or time to develop, but its great 
purpose now and hereafter was to be not only an 
explosive but also a projectile. 

Gunpowder and artillery appeared simultaneously. 
When the three or more ingredients of Greek Fire 
were brought into contact, a closed tube was neces- 
sary to prevent expulsion in every direction. Such 
tubes were probably used in the rockets of India for 
many centuries, and some elastic mind may have 
discovered its germ in natural processes which are 
common everywhere. The age supplied its own 
necessity, like a vestibuled train, it went straight 
when once it was started. It did not, like a horse 
with a nail in its foot, have to slow down. In this 
way it preceded printing, as men in a barbarous 
state prefer arms to anything they have to read. 
The earliest cannon were composed of iron staves 
hooped together, or thin iron tubes coiled round 
with ropes. For five centuries the production and 
use of artillery developed slowly. The ingredients 
of gunpowder had to be studied, as well as the re- 



420 MAHOMET It. TAKES CONSTANTINOPLE. 

sisting power of the arms. The powder used was a 
magazine of oxygen and when it exploded occupied 
two hundred and eighty times its original space. 
In the deflagration, the force exerted was forty tons 
to the square inch and only material of the closest 
texture would prevent the weapon from being shat- 
tered to pieces. 

From the time of the Crusades till the middle of 
the fourteenth century, experiments in the manu- 
facture of guns, indestructible by gunpowder, was 
zealously and steadily urged, and the Saracens in 
Spain were no whit behind their enterprising neigh- 
bors, the Latins. In invention they were the fore- 
most people in Europe. The solid, substantial, men- 
tal qualities of the Western nations did not ripen 
equally in their variable climate with the lively and 
sporadic temperament which had suddenly sprung 
into affluence and kindled with the heat of a tropical 
sun. 

In 1453 Mahomet II began and completed a task 
which had taxed the abilities of many generals for 
a thousand years through all the Dark Ages. Con- 
stantinople was not impregnable, but the arms of 
the Caesars were obsolete. Greek fire had become a 
common knowledge to all the Eastern nations, so 
there was no superiority to be gained by one con- 
testant over another. The legions whose victorious 
eagles had borne victory along the Rhine and the 
Danube had wasted away in the sloth and luxury of 
degenerate times and people. The advance and 
charge of veterans, with sword and lance, and the 
munitions of modern warfare, were but child's play 
tilting reeds against stone walls. Mahomet was a 
Turk, but he was not of the house of Seljuk which 
first made an alliance with the Romans. He was of 
the tribe of Osman or Ottman and came from the 



CANNON MADE TO SHOOT FIVE MILES. 421 

same country as the Seljuks, though farther East 
than the lands occupied by them. When the Mon- 
gols arose in the latter part of the twelfth century, 
their ruler, Jenghis Khan, overrun the Northern 
part of China, breaking through the Great Wall. 
Then he advanced west into Europe, and in so doing 
dislodged the Ottomans, who for giving valuable as- 
sistance to a scattering band of Seljuks, obtained 
some lands and cities in Asia Minor, whence they 
extended across the Hellespont into the present 
Roumelia and Eastward into Syria, and then ad- 
vanced into Csesarea and at last into Egypt about 
the year 1300, when the Seljuk dominion came to 
an end. They became and remained Mohametans, 
as all their descendants are. 

Some few months previous to 1453, Mahomet II 
inquired for and was shown a man whom he asked 
if he could construct a cannon that would reach 
the limits of the city. He said he could, and at the 
instance and under the commission of Mahomet, 
he constructed a great foundry at Adrianople in 
Thrace, 150 miles distant from Constantinople, 
where he cast a cannon that could actually shoot 
five miles, though so great a distance was not then 
needed. When this was done he transported it 
across the country by a whole train of wagons, and 
in the following spring appeared before the city 
with a great army. There he found this huge can- 
non was very imperfect and that it could not be fired 
more than seven times in one day, and in the end it 
went to pieces, though it had a bore as large as a 
man and weighed very many tons. It was a wise 
thought of Mahomet which brought it nearer the 
city from Galatea, a suburb ten miles away, and 
making a tram road of planks across the narrow 
Isthmus to the opposite triangle of the Golden Horn, 



422 CHRISTIANITY GAINS BY PAST MISTAKES. 

in the basin of which he drew his galleys, he was 
able to place the cannon directly opposite the walls. 
In this way he finally made a breach and in fifty- 
eight days took the city. 

As Mahomet at this time had several hundred 
smaller cannon it illustrates the great advance which 
military science had made. It is also to be noted 
that both sides used Greek Fire, so that in a test of 
strength its virtues were equally balanced, except 
in the case of the besieged who had no scaffolding 
to build. Both armies were sufficiently provided 
with every species of missile weapon, but they were 
as potent as jack straws against a deluge. The 
Greeks were short of gunpowder, a very serious cir- 
cumstance, but in a siege of two months, and with 
a quality inferior to modern preparations, complete 
foresight was hardly obtainable. The progress of 
the siege need not be told from day to day, and from 
one discharge of thunderous artillery to another. 
The superiority of gunpowder was acknowledged 
and its use was open to the world. 

Not all the barbarians who overturned kingdoms 
had produced a single discovery which in breadth 
of utility had been such a great blessing to mankind. 
It was a Hungarian that cast the great cannon. It 
was a Syrian who, if he did not discover, offered to 
a free people the happy combination of Greek Fire, 
which saved Christian nations for a thousand years, 
and Western nations indefinitely, from the sword 
of the victorious Moslem. On the other hand, it 
was the barbarians, a band of cutthroats and pirates, 
who first ravaged the coasts of England, pillaged 
everything they could carry away, made Gaul a land 
of free booters and Germany a hive of swarming 
vagrants without a home or country, and nothing to 
recommend them but their inimitable vigor, pluck 



IMPROVEMENTS IN ARTILLERY. 423 

and muscle, which was needed to intermix and build 
up the sharpened, sensitive and otherwise corrupted 
brains of the South. The Cimbri and Teutones 
started the march from the Northwest, the Goths 
took up the middle country, and the Turks and 
Avars the East. It was not a losing game for the 
Republic that dwelt on the Adriatic and the Medi- 
terranean, if they themselves had preserved, not 
their boundaries of land, which fell to all men, but 
the more sfeneral virtue of common sense, which 
seemed to fade away in the track of foreign in- 
vaders. Christianity alone saved them, though it 
wrought slowly and came late. It is no disgrace to 
it that its Empire ended for a few generations in 
Africa, as Gibbon states, for it fell of its own 
van it v, in encouraging monks and Coenibites from 
all parts of the earth, and making a test of doctrines 
unauthorized and which need never be repeated 
again among men. Today the Cross is returned, 
not only to the rim but to the whole breadth of the 
African Continent, and its religion is not barbarian, 
did not come from barbarian sources and will not 
need to emigrate to retain life and vigor. To the 
barbarism that is past we can only use the curt say- 
ing of Carlyle, "Tremble, oh thou land of many 
spitters and jokers, for a pleasant man has come 
among you, and you shall be laid low with the joker 
of jokes and he shall talk his pleasant talk to thee, 
and thou shalt be no more." Shed blood is not good. 
What we want is living blood, flowing through stal- 
wart bodies. Moses was a stalwart, and when he 
slew the Egyptian and hid him in the sand, his act 
was feebly prophetic of the dreariness and desola- 
tion of the government which was soon to fall to 
pieces. 

When once artillery was invented, a new field of 



424 IMPROVEMENTS IN ARTILLERY. 

inquiry and discovery was open. Gunpowder and 
a gun of some sort, presumably a plain tube, was not 
at first attractive. Many persons thought it was or 
would be a failure. The action of gunpowder in 
artillery was most criticised because it was more 
common. The first cannon were breech loaders and 
were fired by a spark or a live wire, but it was 
only in the hands of a great army with a great com- 
missariat and a plethoric treasury that its results 
were satisfactory. Kings could use them ; the Ed- 
wards had a train of them ; but the cost confined 
them to use in few battles. They were immensely 
heavy and when placed in the front of an army in 
a slight coupe or a sudden diversion by the enemy 
they were liable to be captured and turned against 
themselves. A change of front made its movement 
a troublesome necessity, and a large number of 
horses and many yoke of cattle was needed to make 
the change. On very rough ground or on a steep 
hillside it could not be moved, and was liable to be 
overtaken by the enemy or sunk in the mud. Gus- 
tavus Adolphus remedied this evil in part by making 
the cannon of very light weight and increasing the 
number, so that each piece of ordnance could be 
moved with a single span or yoke, and so distributed 
in different parts of the field that they could not all 
at once be captured, but then the range was much 
shortened by reducing the quantity of powder and 
the effect was correspondingly reduced. Strange 
as it may appear, the science of artillery was born 
nearly full grown, without being dandled on the 
laps or fed on the paps of people too proud to 
acknowledge the foundling. It was a breech loader 
then as it is today. The combination of the ex- 
plosive was little different from what it is now, and 
the shape and purpose of the barrel was nearly 



IMPROVEMENTS IN HAND GUNS. 425 

identical with ours. The missiles discharged were 
first stone, then balls of iron, and sometimes they 
were launched red hot. The dimensions of the siege 
guns were of larger or smaller capacity as the neces- 
sity arose of scattered or concentrated fire, and the 
rifling of the chamber was not introduced until 
1846. Solid shot were mostly used at the beginning 
of the 19th Century, when the French introduced 
hollow projectiles and grape shot held together by 
a net similar to the wire cartridges seen in our day, 
and the calibers of guns were reduced in size and 
made uniform as they now are. The cannon of 
Napoleon were not essentially different from those 
of Mahomet at the siege, and while the range of 
modern artillery has largely increased and is still 
increasing, all new discoveries appear along estab- 
lished lines. A distance of five miles for modern 
artillery is now no miracle and the present year has 
seen that distance attained with remarkable accuracy 
in four out of five shots, but the mammoth gun of 
Mahomet was able to carry as great a distance. We 
shall soon be counting on ten miles, and with sub- 
stantially the same weapon. The new designs are 
mostly apparent in a few guns of increased bulk 
and weight which are not now so great factors as 
they used to be, and the innumerable quantity of 
range guns are of quite moderate proportions. But 
where the size of the shot is increased, the bore 
must be correspondingly increased also, so that it is 
able at one discharge to efface an army or a city. 

The new explosives, while so numerous and so 
devastating, do not seem suited for gun service, as 
no gun could hold together under a generous charge 
of such material, while their liability to premature 
explosion from a sudden jar makes them extremely 
dangerous. Common powder needs no substitute 



426 IMPROVEMENTS IN HAND GUNS. 

as it is a force which is practically unlimited and 
controllable. We could almost close this record in 
the light that beats around thrones and armies that 
are to be shaken or annihilated in the presence of 
modern armaments, and that some government or 
some Napoleon is able to create or compel to resist. 
In the commencement of our inquiry we had in con- 
templation only a history of small arms and such as 
the sportsman could carry in the field and with 
which most people are familiar and evince the 
greater interest. The monster cannon which are 
seen only at long intervals by most of us are not 
models of beauty, are repellant to common under- 
standing, when we consider that their initial dis- 
charge is of such great expense that a long con- 
tinued use of them would threaten to bankrupt a 
nation. Masses make a government, but the best 
government is that which is reached through indi- 
viduals. When gunpowder was first introduced, 
hand guns and hand grenades became popular. They 
seemed to be the offspring of and promoters of mili- 
tary spirit. The. great military leaders came to learn 
of the superiority of infantry over cavalry. Then 
followed the necessity of an arm that every soldier 
could use and was capable of the highest degree of 
efficiency. The closed tube which sprang into notice 
with artillery was equally useful with small arms, 
and here was one element of its weakness which 
was not observable in the cannon. The cannon 
rested on a carriage and it lay prone before you. 
A live coal or a hot iron was all that was needed to 
fire it and the impetus was directed only in a straight 
line with the barrel. It was not a wandering ma- 
chine that could be taken up by anyone and set 
down in another part of the field, while the small 
arm was portable by any one person, Two or more 



CAP-LOCK THE CROWNING INVENTION. 427 

persons were necessary to handle army ordnance of 
the smallest caliber, while heavy guns required 
many horses or yoke of cattle, or some other outside 
power, to change its position. The new hand gun 
required one man to hold it up by hand on the 
shoulder and another to aim and fire, and something 
or somebody suggested a breech to take the place of 
the hand of one man, and a bent piece of wood at 
last adapted the gun to the shoulder. Still the gun 
man could not fire his own gun, and the time taken 
was so great that a whole flight of arrows could be 
let loose before a single charge could be driven 
home and unloaded. Some sort of appliance was 
necessary by which fire could be thrown into the 
pan, or the aim was useless. In the reign of Henry 
VII of England a hammer was introduced with 
some sort of a lock which was released by a trigger 
to a pan at the side of the barrel. This hammer held 
a match which ignited the priming. Next, the 
wheel-lock was introduced, in which a steel wheel 
protruded into the priming pan, and rubbing against 
a piece of iron pyrites, which the trigger released, 
produced sparks and set fire to the priming. The 
match-lock proved to be an improvement and re- 
mained in use till the seventeenth century, when the 
flint-lock took its place, which was in use during 
the American Revolution, and perhaps many of us 
have seen it. Little change appeared in the eight- 
eenth century, but in 1807 a Scotch clergyman, 
Alexander Forsyth, obtained a patent for fulminat- 
ing powder, which, however, was not put in use till 
1834. Later the cap and nipple appeared, whicrT 
made a complete revolution in the extension of fire- 
arms, and later placed them in the hands of the 
militia. It revolutionized the pursuit and capture of 
game birds and wild animals by hawk and hound 



428 WAR BROUGHT GUNPOWDER. 

and hunting leopards which brought them into cap- 
tivity by distancing them in speed in the former in- 
stance and furnishing a weapon to battle with the 
ferociousness of the latter, who are placed now at a 
great disadvantage. It was a solemn answer to the 
burglar and highwayman and evil-doers of every 
breed whose inclination was foul and brutal. In 
fifty years and since our day, the flint-lock has been 
laid aside and the cap-lock has taken its place. The 
benefit of the change has been so important that 
bird and beast and creeping thing has been subject 
to the mind of man. The common gun meets ene- 
mies of every kind at home or abroad, on land or 
sea. Within a few years the breech-loader has 
superseded the muzzle-loader, and the safety of the 
weapon and the rapidity of firing has been so much 
increased as to become popular. In 1866 Prussia 
invented the needle-gun and proved its superiority 
in the seven weeks' war with Austria, and in the 
Franco-German war the breech-loader came to the 
front as the most popular kind of all, and its suffi- 
ciency was so far demonstrated that an army has 
not since been considered armed without it. 

We shudder to think what the great captains of 
the world would have done if the modern arms that 
came into use since the discovery of gunpowder 
had fallen into their hands. Once was Europe and 
once was Asia nearly depopulated with the sword. 
The boom of cannon and the crack of the weapons 
of common infantry would have given a long sleep 
to the arts hovering in the twilight, waiting for a 
new day. Religious' bigotry would have been armed 
with the bitterest rancor, and the curses of the 
dying would have shut out the song of the angels. 

It may seem the essence of heresy to declare that 
war brought gunpowder; rather than that, gun- 



REFORMATION CLEANS OUT OLD ABUSES, 429 

powder brought war. Nevertheless, the Holy Wars 
were not the fruit but the fountain and generous 
source of the discovery. Immediately the spread of 
learning began in the capitols of Europe, invention 
was quickened, the rasping of intellects of competing 
and unhomogeneous people was answered by sparks 
that set loose trains of thought that opened up the 
tiwlight of a new day, beat upon the -thrones and 
empires that, going to decay, were wedded anew to 
the inspiration of the hour and brought to life a new 
and welcome progeny. Among barbarians skill and 
ingenuity reached nothing higher or more lasting 
than the weapons which they carried into the field 
and the small implements with which they tore up 
the ground and cultivated scattering crops. The 
better class held in fee and trod as they pleased the 
cultivable lands of their poor cousins whom they 
dispossessed. They ate up their substance, and then 
with cruel hand forfeited the life which had saved 
their own whenever they pleased. The ruling class 
that lived mostly in the cities were little better. The 
reign of the Emperors of Constantinople was a 
record of mutilations, of inquisitorial searchings 
after new methods of torture, without law, without 
courts, without precedent only as they made prece- 
dents — little better in the long run than that of the 
Khans of Tartary, who put to death at the end of 
the bowstring. 

When the Reformation came, this whole batch of 
unclean things was emptied out. Some were picked 
up again, but the great mass of them settled down 
in a weltering pool, which society was only too 
ready to cover up. 

Commerce in Europe and through the East be- 
gan to brighten up soon after the Crusades ceased. 
Traveling, that had been almost suspended between 



430 IGNORE THE ARMS OF ANTIQUITY. 

China and India and the West, took on new life. 
The industry in silk and silk goods revived, the 
caravans started anew and over a wider range of 
country. There were more buyers as well as more 
sellers. Industry was better rewarded; adventurers 
in the business world suffered less. Luxuries were 
more in demand, for they came from a wider coun- 
try and reached a wider market, and were used in 
a more healthful and cleanly channel. The West 
gained in ideas to compensate for its loss of wealth, 
and all the channels of industry seemed pouring 
forth employment for individuals and communities, 
so that war seemed altogether unlikely, and if it 
came it would be controlled within barriers that 
Nature had made or that a congress of peoples had 
determined. The mariners were going out to* sea 
beyond the limits- of the land and beyond sight of 
the shore; the compass was the guide and new 
worlds were the consequence. Old things were 
passing out, the new were coming in. The Saracen 
was pointed to the shores of Africa, whither for a 
while he could sojourn; the Moors also beyond 
Gibraltar, and the haste that hurried them away 
was auspicious of the times and the state of the 
nations as well. 

We do not know what explosives like gunpowder 
will accomplish in the future, but it is reasonable to 
suppose that whatever power they may be made to 
exert there is only one route along which they must 
all travel. Nature is not so generous as to give us 
two ways where one will serve, and the enclosed 
tube or cylinder will never become so* old as to be 
obsolete. The weapons of antiquity have passed 
their prime — the sword must be relegated to ob- 
scurity as the reign of gunpowder extends and pre- 
vails. The singing spear of Homer will never more 



WHAT GUNPOWDER HAS WROUGHT. 431 

make melody for the legions. The bow will bend 
in solitudes where the tide and life of regenerated 
peoples beats in vain ; on frozen shores or inhospit- 
able lands, where commerce does not raise its flag. 
The province of the gun is to reach at long dis- 
tances, and if war must come, blood shall not drip 
on our doorsteps. When modern nations shall ac- 
cumulate great masses of firearms with sufficient 
ability for rapid firing and unlimited range, war 
will perish in a dream, for its expense would be 
fatal. Contracts long ignored between sovereign 
states will not be settled by the arbitrament of arms. 
Peace will follow compromises ; diplomacy, which 
is only another name for deceit and the sophistries 
of courts, will give way to a better understanding 
of the laws and rights of individual men. Threats 
of war will pass away as doves fly to their windows. 
Great ships of steel, riding at anchor and buffeting 
the waves ; great cannon bristling at every porthole ; 
great armies ready for the field, equipped with every 
necessary that wealth or human ingenuity can fur- 
nish — these will declare the terms of peace. The 
hermit nation which adheres to primitive arms or 
methods must reform or be ground to powder. 
China, which has thrown open her great discovery, 
must take it back with largely increased powers and 
uses and put it into immediate commission where 
her empire extends. Japan has already thrown away 
her antiquated arms as she found them unservice- 
able. Our brothers across the sea have made their 
reign in India one of great practical utility, whose 
people, under great restraint by their native rulers 
and by immemorial customs, seemed incapable of 
throwing off the yoke which despotism had saddled 
upon them. When gunpowder attacks bigotry the 
walls begin to tremble. Enlightened management 



432 ^EIGN OF GUNPOWDER PERMANENT. 

produced from Christian sources will supplant the 
labors of the Christian missionary, as it has already 
abolished largely child marriages, the suttee, the 
sacrifice of thousands at the grave of departed war- 
riors or under the wheels of Juggernaut. It has 
broken the bonds of slavery wherever the arma- 
ments of lightning and thunder cut the, foam and 
wake the echoes of distant lands. It is but a few 
years since the black man lifted up his arms in 
despair for Africa where now he is comparatively 
cheerful, happy and prosperous. We cannot fail to 
admire a discovery that brings life and liberty to 
thousands, while it abridges the happiness of few. 
Cobwebs grow in the shadows — they are evil things, 
like owls and bats, that disappear in the morning. 
They need not distort our vision in the sunshine 
and their filmy threads are too burdened with ghostly 
remains to invite lengthened interviews in the shade. 
The railway train is the opposite. In the distance 
it is a shadow, as it grows nearer the whirling 
wheels hold us in suspense till it passes. We should 
not forget it nor fail to inspect it carefully if we saw 
it in Egypt or Paradise, 

We know, oh Gun ! thou art black and rough and 
iron-hearted and unyielding, and thy voice may be 
boastful, but the issues are too great which thou 
art working out through human hands to cancel 
or conceal the mightiness of thy empire. Thou art 
getting nearer to our vision and uttering sublimer 
truths, beautifying human life as industry is re- 
warded and the fruits of thrift and enterprise are 
secured. The last child of a long race of patient 
ancestors who have fondly looked and waited to 
behold thy kingly brow. We salute you, oh gun ! 
by past memories and the intense realization of 
future prophecies, when all equal things, in fact and 



THE GUN IS THE PALLADIUM OF LIBERTY. 433 

in name, shall become equal, when armaments and 
equipments of war shall cease to be the playthings 
of princes and the resort of unconsecrated cham- 
pions of tyranny wherever man is found. To every 
threatened breach of the decalogue it will eventually 
oppose itself and cry out, "Thou shalt not." It will 
create and preserve the forces which build up a 
healthy and enlightened conscience, dissipate law- 
lessness, the terror of the strong over the weak, con- 
firm in all men the desire to do good and not evil, 
to see that all laws are wholesome, healthy and effi- 
cient, and establish beyond controversy every in- 
disputable right to which man is born. When these 
are secured the humble and economic arts shall 
come in and prosper. We know with what great 
difficulties the discoveries of the world came in, and 
the rebuke which they met from those who should 
have been their ardent advocates. The compass, the 
arc, the potter's wheel, the movable types of Caxton 
and Guttenberg, when men had no light compara- 
ble to those of the present day, are instances. Now 
men stop and think, almost everything is possible 
which the human mind can conceive. The prophet 
of today reaches his tombstone tomorrow, for all 
eyes cannot endure the light which breaks in* upon 
every zone of human knowledge. 

Fifty years ago the Sage of Cragenputtoch de- 
livered his message, "To do something, if it is the 
utmost you have in you, and do it in God's name." 
The boom of the cannon is to be the ministry of 
Jesus, the wash of its waves shall carry his saluta- 
tion to all lands. The gun will do much, as it has 
done much in quiet places where the law is not 
needlessly invoked. It enters into the safety of 
homes ; step by step it follows the individual who 
cannot rely upon brute strength. It is not the law. 



434 GUN IS THE PALLADIUM OF;LIBERTY. 

it does not make law, but it is and should be its 
agent. The man who works beside him who does 
not work without any protection soon becomes the 
victim. The gun, whether in public or otherwise, 
makes the wrongdoer hesitate with fear and where 
everybody may have the support of some kind of 
arms, it is seldom necessary to have any. 

The gun is the one friend that cannot get old. 
It is on guard by night and by day, in heat or in 
cold. It may be in your arms or lie beside you, it 
holds in suspense or grapples with the outlaws of 
society, and when once arraigned follows them to 
their doom. To the pioneer it comes as the one 
comfort which is not denied him when all others 
fail. He takes his matchlock with a confidence that 
was never violated. With it he has met the hungry 
wolf and closed his jaws, and his own life has been 
often prolonged with the fruits of the chase. The 
gun has been a reformer. The evils which it has 
brought in are incomparable with those it has cast 
out. It has carried the prestige of a higher civiliza- 
tion where life was low and vitalized it with new 
vigor. It has opened the prisons, cut off the chains 
and drawn the trembling victims from fire and 
fagot, from the lash and the rack, and given them 
new ideas of virtue and new surprises of conscience 
where it was wasting in atrophy, and in the reform- 
ation of the body uncovered the jewel of the soul, 
creating the mental equipment anew so that it be- 
came clean, sweet and resourcful, inviting the bet- 
ter spirit to come to its temple and be welcome. It 
stands at the door in the hands of that grimy rep- 
resentative when the soldier enlists for service. It 
alone witnesses the kiss of "wife, mother or lover. At 
the hour of his departure it sleeps by his side, in 
the vigils of the camp or on the battle-field, and is 



GUN IS THE PALLADIUM OF LIBERTY. 435 

more familiar to him in emergency than knapsack 
or canteen. He may fall in strange lands and be 
rescued, or the sad pall may be made where he has 
fallen, and only the last look which science can re- 
cover from the grasp of death be obtained by her 
who was his all in all. Death will not steal him 
away without a last volley over his grave and a long- 
silent farewell, and if we may follow him farther 
only from his having met his last enemy would 
keep him from calling for his arms. 




POEM S 



POEMS. 

THE MYSTERY. 

A COELO MYSTERIUM. 

There's blood upon the moon, to blood the moon 

Shall turn till some high priest in pity grown, 

Seeing our sorrows as his own, 

Has gathered all the nation's guilt 

Of all the blood that e'er was spilt 

From righteous Abel down. 

So garments rolled in blood may be 

The winding sheet of mystery 

By which the soul climbs up to God. 

In angel hands the martyrs breath 

Bears, him beyond the gates of death, 

Wipes off the sweat which hotly rolled 

To stay the plunderers of his soul, 

And in the realms of light makes known 

The kingdoms now become his own. 

Singing the songs the angels taught, 

Bringing the gifts the Magii brought, 

Blending the service with the sense 

Of myrrh and nard and frankincense. 

Dear Heart, if ever thoughts precipitate 
Accuse thy burden altogether great, 
And tears flow down from thy weak eyes 
Obsequious to the fading light, 
The gilded dome shall clear thy sight. 

439 



440 THE MYSTERY. 

There some fair orb o'ercasting all 
May be the tears that you let fall, 
And lamps of Heaven that never dim, 
Blazing in pomp from rim to rim 
Of that great balcony shall be 
The Nation's hope and destiny. 
Whilst still survive the blood and tears 
That make the record of the years, 
Each jewelled star in chorus sings, 
The Cherubim lift up their wings, 
Triumphant songs that never cease, 
"Good will to men on Earth and Peace." 

And oh, if some sweet Pleiades be near 
To soothe and cheer a fainting mariner, 
Let not Orion, that son of Mars, 
Dispute the courses of the stars 
And bring defeat like Sisera. 
And should apostate fiends prepare 
To wreck all we have lodged there 
Of faith and hope in one sweet star, 
They'd fall from Heaven like Lucifer. 
So twinkling stars in mercy meek 
Would beckon if they could not speak, 
Till breaks the golden bowl to tell 
To each the plentitude of Hell. 
The saddest words, the most forlorn, 
Spoken by man since Christ was born, 
Wrecking the heart with anguish torn, 
"His blood on us and our children." 



THE MYSTERY. 1 441 

In worlds of space, in darkness so profound 

No eye could measure and no plummet sound, 

Unnumbered systems rise to dawn 

A moment brief and then are gone. 

But never yet shall thy sweet ministry 

Eclipsed be by any malady 

Of earth or sky. Never a gale 

That sweeps the sea or bends the sail, 

Never the cyclone's fatal breath, 

Nor cloud-racks hurried dance of death 

Can smite the stars, nor tempest driven 

Can drown the melody of Heaven. 

Whilst he that runs as he that reads 

May count his stars as nuns count beads, 

Brightest and best that little gem 

That led the way to Bethlehem 

To see the King, and show to thee 

The mystery of that red sea 

Of blood. Wash and be clean. 



BEYOND THE BLUE. 

What seaport town is this, 
And whence so brave a crew 

Sailing away for shores of bliss 
Never the land in view? 

Many a year has come and gone 
Many a sea-bird south has flown 

And ships have sailed and ships are due 

That never came back bevond the blue. 



442 BEYOND THE BLUE. 

All day long with song and shout, 

Many a ship went sailing out, 
Along the track the dolphins flew 

The flying fish, the shrill sea-mew, 
Burst o'er the bows in flying crowds ; 

The stormy petrel sought the shrouds 
Till night came on they never knew 

Whither they were beyond the blue. 

Some few there were in passions power 

Frittered away the morning hour, 
Heard siren songs or what is worse 

Floated away to isles of Circe, 
Where beauty smiled, where music pealed, 

In eager haste they slipped the keel ; 
But sailing oft you hardly knew 

Whither they went beyond the blue. 

Once on the ocean's outer rim, 

The sails were set, the masts were trim, 
The sun a marvel to behold ; 

Never withdrew its sea of gold ; 
jBut straining seas in every part 

Exhausted all the sailor's art, 
Though sailing on you hardly knew 

Whither they went beyond the blue. 

Caught in the dreadful undertow, 

The masts and sails were soon to go. 

The fickle wind turned to a gale. 

The fog came down with rain and hail, 



BEYOND THE BLUE. 443 

Great billows rose with every breath, 
And darkness led the dance of death ; 

And looking now full well I knew 
Whither they went beyond the blue. 

Oh ! ships that sail, oh ships that toss, 

Without a guide you may be lost, 
Oh ! sailors wheresoever cast 

It is to port ye come at last. 
Nor ship, nor sail, nor dripping oar 

Nor wash of seas shall reach that shore. 
Where all is peace, be this my due, 

The happy home beyond the blue. 



UNSATISFIED. 



I am a child of little thought ; 
My teachers are themselves untaught. 
Caught in the dreadful undertow, 
Whither my way how shall I know. 
Falter or fail, the Great Author still 
Unchanged must do his sov'reign will. 

The eyes that see are dimmed and blurred, 
The spirit tones are all unheard. 
Could faintest voice from that far shore 
Reach my dull ears I'd ask no more. 

The purple plum 
Is not so dumb, 
The yellow peach 



444 UNSATISFIED. 

Yields to my reach, 

And loving lips, 

Like finger tips, 
Are prone to meet I know 
But oh, but oh, where shall I go 
To find my friend become my foe? 

The little nest that once had grown 
So doubly dear is sad and lone. 
And when I hear the dripping rain, 
The rafters creak and cry with pain, 
Some ghost I'm sure is writing there 
In ghostly stains all my despair. 
Till bended roof and strained wall 
Fulfill the promise of their fall. 
Only the swallow under the eaves 
Neither his bosom frets nor grieves, 
Whilst I am left nor peace nor rest 
Slowly rny sun sinks down the west. 



FAIR AND FOUL. 

"Fair is foul and foul is fair 

Hover through the fog and filthy air." 

— Macbeth. 

"If you would view fair Melrose right, 
Go visit it by pale moonlight ; 
But many a ruined shapeless wall 
Had better not be seen at all. 
Many a wan and wasted dame 



FAIR AND FOUL. 446 

That fans her tallow dip to flame 
Gives up as hostage for her pride 
A long-drawn life of suicide. 
And sad to see the withered sires 
(Volcanoes that have drawn their fires) 
Piping the songs they used to sing 
When hope was borne on buoyant wing, 
And sadder he whose tender cares 
Encumbers all his modest prayers, 
Sees the gray light go silvered down 
On fringed lips that once were brown 
And dimly feels the soft caress 
Sink to a span and growing less. 
For all is gone or going on 
To silence and oblivion. 

"The pouting lips, the breath that's warm 

With summer fragrance and of morn, 

The golden locks that rise on piles 

Like bridges o'er some sunken wild — 

These may allure, and often do, 

As caves where winds go whistling through 

And many a cheek on others may 

To-morrow smile as you to-day 

And leave behind (I will not lie) 

But swarming droves of bacilli. 

In law and physic you may test 

The shortest way to be the best. 

But blushing cheek will so undo it, 

The longest way seems shortest to it. 



446 



FAIR AND FOUL. 



"I saw a coquette once, and fair ; 
I knew her dainty cheek and hair, 
The crinkle on her upturned nose, 
Her swelling bust and pinched toes, 
With many a soft and sunny curi 
She might have stood against the world 
As Caesar did, whose very name 
Had lit her footsteps with a flame. 




Out from her lips of honey-dew, 
Rippled and rolled sweet nothings through ; 
Caroled and caroled like a bird, 
The swee'st notes I ever heard. 
And by her look which oft betrayed 
Much more unspoken than was said, 
With many a soft and silly wink 
She bore me softly to the brink. 



FAIR AND FOUL. 447 

Her eyes so bright she raised her fan 
To break the light — (I speak as man, 
And never care at all to bellow) — 
'Tis true she winked another fellow 
And left me in the shade — the mouse — 
When first I try to build a house 
(Whoever heard; I never did before), 
With fans, I'll deaden up the floor. 

And I was lost had not a blonde 
Lifted her baton as a wand 
Sung out the hymn, "Pull for the Shore." 
They pulled and pulled but eyed me more 
With many a smile, but when the laugh 
Opened its gates too wide by half, 
"It's up to you," cried Leonore, 
I could have sunk beneath the floor. 
Without a shade upon my face, 
Without a prayer to give me grace, 

I answered true 

(The shore in view) 

Summer — is — o'er. 

"I saw a man — I knew him well — 
His feelings gave him such a spell 
At every stage they rose to score him, 
At every step were there before him. 
His friends were few of every name, 
And scarcer grew the more they came, 
Had he but been a little jolly, 



448 FAIR AND FOUL. 

They soon had laughed him of his folly. 
And oh, the roses might have grown 
Where night-shade lingered all alone ; 
For pains like his would give a shock 
To nerves elastic as a rock. 
His belly like a punch-bowl grew, 

He ate to kill a kangaroo. 

Down from its seat degraded, lower'd, 

His native wit fell overboard, 

And none remained another day 

Had not a doctor passed that way, 







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Observed the awful maw, and said 
Nothing was left up in his head; 
The gray matter gone, every nerve 
On double duty had to serve. 
Their elder brother that fed on grass 
Some wild beast maybe, or an ass, 



FAIR AND FOUL. 449 

Whilst the great ducts so filled with steam 
Shot poisoned vapors in a stream. 
His pent up feelings must have vent, 
And this is what the doctor meant; 

Felt of his pulse and pulled his tongue, 
Emptied the barrel by the bung. 
Only a Seidlitz powder, please, 
Could reach the seat of his disease, 
And much surprised the idle brain 
Welcomed its nerves safe back again. 
And now whene'er his plaint begins 
Of pains low down his abdomen, 
So like a chicken thief he feels, 
Quickly he takes unto his heels, 
His adipose tissue falls away, 
Rises aloft the crowning gray." 



SATISFIED. 



The man is born, but not the hour. 
It waits until endued with power 

The victory sees. 
Th' encircling sun is constant taught 
To bring to light what man has sought 

Upon his knees. 

To hear the music of the spheres, 
Diving must give you ears, 
Or toll the bell. 



450 SATISFIED. 

For all the promises that spring 

May to the dove's returning wing 

Be lost as well. 

I know the key will fit the lock, 
His grace will never mock 

My being free, 
And sin and death shall cease to mean 
What to our ears has always been 

Captivity. 

If in His councils it shall be 
That I shall sign my own decree, 

It shall be just. 
Nor aching heart nor throbbing breast 
Shall bear a shadow that shall rest 

On whom I trust. 



fl-283 84 



ERRATA. 

Page 109 should read "Four propositions. " 



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